It’s a lot easier to stay idealistic if you don’t sign two to five next-of-kin letters every day.

A man lives by believing something: not by debating and arguing about many things.

So when these people sell out, even though they get fabulously rich, they’re gypping themselves out of one of the potentially most rewarding experiences of their unfolding lives. Without it, they may never know their values or how to keep their newfound wealth in perspective.

It is not possible to eat me without insisting that I sing praises of my devourer?

What’s the use of happiness? It can’t buy you money.

The man who writes about himself and his own time is the only man who writes about all people and about all time.

There will always be something to ruin our lives, it all depends on what or which finds us first. We are always ripe and ready to be taken.

Comedy just pokes at problems, rarely confronts them squarely. Drama is like a plate of meat and potatoes, comedy is rather the dessert, a bit like meringue.

Through our own recovered innocence we discern the innocence of our neighbors.

An idealist is a person who helps other people to be prosperous.

The idea is to try to give all the information to help others to judge the value of your contribution; not just the information that leads to judgment in one particular direction or another.

Whenever a fellow tells me he’s bipartisan, I know he’s going to vote against me.

If all misfortunes were laid in one common heap whence everyone must take an equal portion, most people would be contented to take their own and depart.

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

In praise there is more obtrusiveness than in blame.

Sweet are the uses of adversity which, like the toad, ugly and venomous, wears yet a precious jewel in his head.

Fame will go by and, so long, I’ve had you, fame. If it goes by, I’ve always known it was fickle. So at least it’s something I experience, but that’s not where I live.

What makes us Americans is our shared commitment to an ideal – that all of us are created equal, and all of us have the chance to make of our lives what we will.

We must rekindle the fire of idealism in our society.

When you’re doing a film and the majority of the film is cast black, for me, it’s most important to get people to view those movies as just movies, as just good movies. At the end of the day, regardless of the color of the cast, we’re all doing the same thing in this business: trying to make a good film.

The day which we fear as our last is but the birthday of eternity.

Old age, believe me, is a good and pleasant thing. It is true you are gently shouldered off the stage, but then you are given such a comfortable front stall as spectator.

Death is no more than passing from one room into another. But there’s a difference for me, you know. Because in that other room I shall be able to see.

Truth has rough flavours if we bite it through.

It’s possible – you can never know – that the universe exists only for me. If so, it’s sure going well for me, I must admit.

Keep your eyes wide open before marriage, half shut afterwards.

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

There is nothing insignificant in the world. It all depends on the point of view.

The public is the only critic whose opinion is worth anything at all.

Though we travel the world over to find the beautiful, we must carry it with us or we find it not.

There is nothing more tragic than to find an individual bogged down in the length of life, devoid of breadth.

Optimism means better than reality; pessimism means worse than reality. I’m a realist.

The child inside of you knows how to take things as they come, how to deal most effectively and happily with everything and everyone it encounters on this planet. If you can recapture that childlike essence of your being, you can stay ‚forever young at heart.‘

Life is never fair, and perhaps it is a good thing for most of us that it is not.

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

I have nothing to ask but that you would remove to the other side, that you may not, by intercepting the sunshine, take from me what you cannot give.

You will always have partial points of view, and you’ll always have the story behind the story that hasn’t come out yet. And any form of journalism you’re involved with is going to be up against a biased viewpoint and partial knowledge.

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

Everything is funny, as long as it’s happening to somebody else.

Life, an age to the miserable, and a moment to the happy.

Do not be very upright in your dealings for you would see by going to the forest that straight trees are cut down while crooked ones are left standing.

I want to stand as close to the edge as I can without going over. Out on the edge you see all the kinds of things you can’t see from the center.

I have spent many years of my life in opposition, and I rather like the role.

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

I am an optimist. It does not seem too much use being anything else.

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

You just want something else that someone else has, but that doesn’t mean what you have isn’t beautiful, because people always want what you have, and you always want what they have – no one is ever 100 per cent like, ‚Yes, I’m the bomb dot com – from head to toe!‘

To observations which ourselves we make, we grow more partial for th‘ observer’s sake.

I have been influenced in my thinking by both west and east.

In nature, nothing is perfect and everything is perfect. Trees can be contorted, bent in weird ways, and they’re still beautiful.

Frankly, I mean, sometimes the interpretations I’ve seen on some of the songs that I’ve written are a lot more interesting than the input that I put in.

I think there is a sense of being forced at this time to look at America’s really large shadow and that’s not all that bad.

Age merely shows what children we remain.

Now, you lose something in your life, or you come into a conflict, and there’s gonna come a time that you’re gonna know: There was a reason for that. And at the end of your life, all the things you thought were periods, they turn out to be commas. There was never a full stop in any of it.

Men are disturbed not by things, but by the view which they take of them.

Age is an issue of mind over matter. If you don’t mind, it doesn’t matter.

You see, idealism detached from action is just a dream. But idealism allied with pragmatism, with rolling up your sleeves and making the world bend a bit, is very exciting. It’s very real. It’s very strong.

Lo, what huge heaps of littleness around!

Everything that we see is a shadow cast by that which we do not see.

Some people regard private enterprise as a predatory tiger to be shot. Others look on it as a cow they can milk. Not enough people see it as a healthy horse, pulling a sturdy wagon.

Yesterday’s weirdness is tomorrow’s reason why.