It is true that we are weak and sick and ugly and quarrelsome but if that is all we ever were, we would millenniums ago have disappeared from the face of the earth.

I’m not resigned, but I’m realistic too. The statistics in my case are very poor. Not many people come through esophageal cancer and live to talk about it, or not for long. And the other wager is, the part of the wager, it’s a certainty you’ll have a terrible time and you may wish you were dying because it’s an awful process.

I can understand how some people might resent me for having the audacity to continue playing music, but it’d take a lot more than that to stop me from doing it. I started Foo Fighters because I didn’t want to retreat.

And while the law of competition may be sometimes hard for the individual, it is best for the race, because it ensures the survival of the fittest in every department.

I came up from a difficult background.

Every man casts a shadow; not his body only, but his imperfectly mingled spirit. This is his grief. Let him turn which way he will, it falls opposite to the sun; short at noon, long at eve. Did you never see it?

He that struggles with us strengthens our nerves, and sharpens our skill. Our antagonist is our helper.

Never let your head hang down. Never give up and sit down and grieve. Find another way. And don’t pray when it rains if you don’t pray when the sun shines.

Nothing is softer or more flexible than water, yet nothing can resist it.

Man can believe the impossible, but man can never believe the improbable.

I find hope in the darkest of days, and focus in the brightest. I do not judge the universe.

Thought once awakened does not again slumber; unfolds itself into a System of Thought; grows, in man after man, generation after generation, – till its full stature is reached, and such System of Thought can grow no farther, but must give place to another.

I have always been pushed by the negative. The apparent failure of a play sends me back to my typewriter that very night, before the reviews are out. I am more compelled to get back to work than if I had a success.

Everybody needs beauty as well as bread, places to play in and pray in, where nature may heal and give strength to body and soul.

What is straight? A line can be straight, or a street, but the human heart, oh, no, it’s curved like a road through mountains.

The year 2100 will see eugenics universally established. In past ages, the law governing the survival of the fittest roughly weeded out the less desirable strains. Then man’s new sense of pity began to interfere with the ruthless workings of nature. As a result, we continue to keep alive and to breed the unfit.

People will try to bring you down, but you gotta go up.

I used to have a real problem with self-pity. Every time the devil would throw a pity party, I would attend.

Being president is like being a jackass in a hailstorm. There’s nothing to do but to stand there and take it.

Only strength can cooperate. Weakness can only beg.

Man is an idea, and a precious small idea once he turns his back on love.

I’m no longer just a candidate. I’m the President. I know what it means to send young Americans into battle, for I have held in my arms the mothers and fathers of those who didn’t return. I’ve shared the pain of families who’ve lost their homes, and the frustration of workers who’ve lost their jobs.

In crises the most daring course is often safest.

True nobility is exempt from fear.

The world has not yet reached the point which, in my view, is an essential condition for the survival of our human species: access by all the peoples to the material resources of this planet.

How one life turns out is not dependent on what people do to us or what they don’t do for us.

Evolution can go to hell as far as I am concerned. What a mistake we are. We have mortally wounded this sweet life-supporting planet – the only one in the whole Milky Way – with a century of transportation whoopee.

Whatever we believe about how we got to be the extraordinary creatures we are today is far less important than bringing our intellect to bear on how do we get together now around the world and get out of the mess that we’ve made. That’s the key thing now. Never mind how we got to be who we are.

But does that mean that war and violence are inevitable? I would argue not because we have also evolved this amazingly sophisticated intellect, and we are capable of controlling our innate behavior a lot of the time.

From such crooked wood as that which man is made of, nothing straight can be fashioned.

Mankind is not likely to salvage civilization unless he can evolve a system of good and evil which is independent of heaven and hell.

Really I don’t like human nature unless all candied over with art.

In all my wild mountaineering, I have enjoyed only one avalanche ride; and the start was so sudden, and the end came so soon, I thought but little of the danger that goes with this sort of travel, though one thinks fast at such times.

Strength and growth come only through continuous effort and struggle.

We’re all caught up in circumstances, and we’re all good and evil. When you’re really hungry, for instance, you’ll do anything to survive. I think the most evil thing – well, maybe that’s too strong – but certainly a very evil thing is judgment, the sin of ignorance.

I’ve 20,000 hours of clinical practice; you’re not naive after the first few thousand. I’ve helped people deal with things that most people can’t imagine.

Love and compassion are necessities, not luxuries. Without them humanity cannot survive.

People say you have to hit rock bottom, and, I can tell you, almost dying is as rock bottom as it gets.

It’s human nature to blame someone else for your shortcomings or upsets.

He who has a why to live can bear almost any how.

After May 1940, the good times were few and far between; first there was the war, then the capitulation, and then the arrival of the Germans, which is when the trouble started for the Jews.

Remember that life’s big changes rarely give advance warning.

Silence is a source of great strength.

But man is not made for defeat. A man can be destroyed but not defeated.

Books are sharks… because sharks have been around for a very long time. There were sharks before there were dinosaurs, and the reason sharks are still in the ocean is that nothing is better at being a shark than a shark.

Much of your pain is the bitter potion by which the physician within you heals your sick self.

If there were in the world today any large number of people who desired their own happiness more than they desired the unhappiness of others, we could have a paradise in a few years.

Remember, always give your best. Never get discouraged. Never be petty. Always remember, others may hate you. But those who hate you don’t win unless you hate them. And then you destroy yourself.

I was born with a happy heart, and I try to keep a good attitude. It’s not true that I’m happy all the time because nobody is, and we all go through our things.

We should learn to accept that change is truly the only thing that’s going on always, and learn to ride with it and enjoy it.

Exercise is labor without weariness.

It constitutes a superhuman effort to lead any people in times of crisis. Without them, the changes would be impossible.

The path we have chosen for the present is full of hazards, as all paths are. The cost of freedom is always high, but Americans have always paid it. And one path we shall never choose, and that is the path of surrender, or submission.

Every revolution evaporates and leaves behind only the slime of a new bureaucracy.

Any experience that touches you, in any particular way, is good. It can be a horrible experience.

War is so complex; human nature is so complex. There’s no filmmaker who has ever figured it out perfectly.

I’m so tough and so bad, I can be humble and lift another guy up.

It is better to be the hammer than the anvil.

It’s in the difficult times that we’re growing and you can’t just rebuke everything hard. We’ve got to endure it and fight the good fight of faith and pass the test.

We combat obstacles in order to get repose, and when got, the repose is insupportable.

If there was an observer on Mars, they would probably be amazed that we have survived this long.