It’s more interesting for me to figure out how to be superior in areas where I’m naive, where I’m a novice.

Experience is something you don’t get until just after you need it.

Each player must accept the cards life deals him or her: but once they are in hand, he or she alone must decide how to play the cards in order to win the game.

There is only one sort of discipline, perfect discipline.

It is well for the world that in most of us, by the age of thirty, the character has set like plaster, and will never soften again.

Almost all of our sorrows spring out of our relations with other people.

Ever since I was a child I have had this instinctive urge for expansion and growth. To me, the function and duty of a quality human being is the sincere and honest development of one’s potential.

The spirit becomes free only when it ceases to be a support.

I think it’s a very good thing to leave your country and look at it from afar.

In 7th grade, I believe, I wrote my first rap song. It was about everything I was seeing, everything that was going on around me.

Practice yourself, for heaven’s sake in little things, and then proceed to greater.

I don’t think I’m an unlucky person.

It’s hard for anybody who’s been with me not to feel starved for affection when I’m making love to my ideas. Maybe it’s not meant for me to settle down and be married.

The proper study of mankind is books.

Most of us are about as eager to be changed as we were to be born, and go through our changes in a similar state of shock.

Millions of people live their entire lives without finding themselves. But it is something I must do.

Genius without education is like silver in the mine.

The faults of a superior person are like the sun and moon. They have their faults, and everyone sees them; they change and everyone looks up to them.

To become ‚unique,‘ the challenge is to fight the hardest battle which anyone can imagine until you reach your destination.

I can never be safe; I always try and go against the grain. As soon as I accomplish one thing, I just set a higher goal. That’s how I’ve gotten to where I am.

I want to put a ding in the universe.

Your most important work is always ahead of you, never behind you.

Playing Etta James in the movie ‚Cadillac Records‘ really changed me. It was a darker character, and I realized that if anything is too comfortable, I want to run from it. It’s no fun being safe.

Me not finishing school – in my head, I still have this insecurity when I’m talking to someone educated.

Do not be in a hurry to succeed. What would you have to live for afterwards? Better make the horizon your goal; it will always be ahead of you.

To be happy we must not be too concerned with others.

The first condition of progress is the removal of censorship.

As far as a glass ceiling, I feel that all you can do is give it your absolute best with whatever gifts the universe has given you. And if you make it in some way that other people can recognize, that’s fine. But even if you don’t quote-unquote make it, you’re fine if you’ve given it your whole heart and soul.

I’m not trying to follow a set of rules and stuff. I’m just living my life.

My view is that at a younger age your optimism is more and you have more imagination etc. You have less bias.

One of the most important decisions you’ll ever make is choosing the kind of universe you exist in: is it helpful and supportive or hostile and unsupportive? Your answer to this question will make all the difference in terms of how you live your life and what kind of Divine assistance you attract.

The child who desires education will be bettered by it; the child who dislikes it disgraced.

I always tell young girls, surround yourself with goodness. I learned early on how to get the haters out of my life.

I like learning more about people; I like to talk to people.

There’s not some idea I’m going to create a work that’s going to change everybody’s consciousness.

History will point out some of the things I did wrong and some of the things I did right.

Songwriting is my way of channeling my feelings and my thoughts. Not just mine, but the things I see, the people I care about. My head would explode if I didn’t get some of that stuff out.

I put a lot of pressure on myself. I think something’s not good enough, and I won’t stop until I feel like I’ve made it. I’m never satisfied.

To know what you know and what you do not know, that is true knowledge.

I learned a long time ago how to be coachable.

I was asked to act when I couldn’t act. I was asked to sing ‚Funny Face‘ when I couldn’t sing, and dance with Fred Astaire when I couldn’t dance – and do all kinds of things I wasn’t prepared for. Then I tried like mad to cope with it.

Our treasure lies in the beehive of our knowledge. We are perpetually on the way thither, being by nature winged insects and honey gatherers of the mind.

We choose our joys and sorrows long before we experience them.

Nothing will work unless you do.

If you want to be enthusiastic, act enthusiastic.

If a man neglects education, he walks lame to the end of his life.

If you don’t set the tone for the day, the devil will set it for you.

I understand aggressiveness in only one way: being prepared to hurt yourself, not someone else.

I always wanted a family.

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

Your greatest asset is your earning ability. Your greatest resource is your time.

My only fault is that I don’t realize how great I really am.

I deeply regret any harm, or any perceived harm, that I may have done to anyone by any behaviour of mine.

I didn’t get trained by the school system like other kids, and when I did concentrate on learning, my mind was cluttered and locked by the programming of the system.

Everything has its wonders, even darkness and silence, and I learn, whatever state I may be in, therein to be content.

There is such a thing as old emotional pain living inside you. It is an accumulation of painful life experience that was not fully faced and accepted in the moment it arose. It leaves behind an energy form of emotional pain.

Criticism may not be agreeable, but it is necessary. It fulfils the same function as pain in the human body. It calls attention to an unhealthy state of things.

In the beginning, I was very insecure. I hated how I looked in pictures.

Orthodoxy is the diehard of the world of thought. It learns not, neither can it forget.

The march of the human mind is slow.

The happiest people in the world are those who feel absolutely terrific about themselves, and this is the natural outgrowth of accepting total responsibility for every part of their life.