It is a narrow mind which cannot look at a subject from various points of view.

A physician is not angry at the intemperance of a mad patient, nor does he take it ill to be railed at by a man in fever. Just so should a wise man treat all mankind, as a physician does his patient, and look upon them only as sick and extravagant.

I grow daily to honour facts more and more, and theory less and less. A fact, it seems to me, is a great thing; a sentence printed, if not by God, then at least by the Devil.

People think, because we’re young, we aren’t complex, but that’s not true. We deal with life and love and broken hearts in the same way a woman a few years older might.

In the business world, the rearview mirror is always clearer than the windshield.

A thing is not necessarily true because a man dies for it.

I don’t think culture is something you can describe.

Love is a trap. When it appears, we see only its light, not its shadows.

The use of travelling is to regulate imagination by reality, and instead of thinking how things may be, to see them as they are.

The minority is sometimes right; the majority always wrong.

God is a thought who makes crooked all that is straight.

Remember happiness doesn’t depend upon who you are or what you have; it depends solely on what you think.

Teach us that wealth is not elegance, that profusion is not magnificence, that splendor is not beauty.

Anyone who keeps the ability to see beauty never grows old.

So let’s be honest with ourselves and not take ourselves too serious, and never condemn the other fellow for doing what we are doing every day, only in a different way.

What is normal? Normal was yesterday. If you lose a leg, one day you’re hopping around on one leg, so you know the difference.

The two worst strategic mistakes to make are acting prematurely and letting an opportunity slip; to avoid this, the warrior treats each situation as if it were unique and never resorts to formulae, recipes or other people’s opinions.

When people speak to you about a preventive war, you tell them to go and fight it. After my experience, I have come to hate war.

For all right judgment of any man or things it is useful, nay, essential, to see his good qualities before pronouncing on his bad.

Anyone who conducts an argument by appealing to authority is not using his intelligence; he is just using his memory.

The things I talk about and explain couldn’t happen – yet, they don’t seem impossible – you could say I talk about the world in an abstract perspective. But then, the world is basically insane – and it’s trying to pass itself off as being a sane place. I show it for what it is.

The worst men often give the best advice.

I don’t have this feeling that 70 is really old.

Do everything as in the eye of another.

Life does not cease to be funny when people die any more than it ceases to be serious when people laugh.

Man is fond of counting his troubles, but he does not count his joys. If he counted them up as he ought to, he would see that every lot has enough happiness provided for it.

I didn’t die young. So I am very lucky. There are other artists and people that didn’t survive certain things… people can imagine that I did the most dangerous, and I did the worst… for many reasons, I shouldn’t be here.

There are a thousand hacking at the branches of evil to one who is striking at the root.

Regarding life, the wisest men of all ages have judged alike: it is worthless.

To be in opposition is not to be a nihilist.

If everyone is thinking alike, then somebody isn’t thinking.

I tried being reasonable, I didn’t like it.

I still think like a Marxist in many ways.

There are definitely people who disagree with certain creative decisions you make. Pleasing everyone is pretty hard.

I think the idea of art kills creativity.

Old men are dangerous: it doesn’t matter to them what is going to happen to the world.

Premature certainty is the enemy of the truth.

I think we consider too much the good luck of the early bird and not enough the bad luck of the early worm.

Too much of what is called ‚education‘ is little more than an expensive isolation from reality.

Do not fear to be eccentric in opinion, for every opinion now accepted was once eccentric.

Happiness is a how; not a what. A talent, not an object.

There is nothing so pitiful as a young cynic because he has gone from knowing nothing to believing nothing.

The moment you think you understand a great work of art, it’s dead for you.

Tis but a part we see, and not a whole.

We can’t solve problems by using the same kind of thinking we used when we created them.

All travel has its advantages. If the passenger visits better countries, he may learn to improve his own. And if fortune carries him to worse, he may learn to enjoy it.

You have to see and smell and feel the circumstances of people to really understand them.

We are all in the gutter, but some of us are looking at the stars.

All of the people in my life whom I consider to be close friends or colleagues are good thinkers.

So what is discord at one level of your being is harmony at another level.

Men often oppose a thing merely because they have had no agency in planning it, or because it may have been planned by those whom they dislike.

Death does not concern us, because as long as we exist, death is not here. And when it does come, we no longer exist.

There really is no difference between the bully and the victim.

Like a pianist runs her fingers over the keys, I’ll search my mind for what to say. Now, the poem may want you to write it. And then sometimes you see a situation and think, ‚I’d like to write about that.‘ Those are two different ways of being approached by a poem, or approaching a poem.

Thinking isn’t agreeing or disagreeing. That’s voting.

Employers and business leaders need people who can think for themselves – who can take initiative and be the solution to problems.

While on top of Everest, I looked across the valley towards the great peak Makalu and mentally worked out a route about how it could be climbed. It showed me that even though I was standing on top of the world, it wasn’t the end of everything. I was still looking beyond to other interesting challenges.

Convictions are more dangerous foes of truth than lies.

We call a man a bigot or a slave of dogma because he is a thinker who has thought thoroughly and to a definite end.

What’s real freedom? Real freedom is being able to not have my way and still be just as happy as if I did.

Why is it that we rejoice at a birth and grieve at a funeral? It is because we are not the person involved.