It’s okay to eat fish because they don’t have any feelings.

The finest works of art are precious, among other reasons, because they make it possible for us to know, if only imperfectly and for a little while, what it actually feels like to think subtly and feel nobly.

Creativity has got to start with humanity and when you’re a human being, you feel, you suffer. You’re gay, you’re sick, you’re nervous or whatever.

The emotions in a song – the anger, aggression – have got to be legitimate.

The superior man thinks always of virtue; the common man thinks of comfort.

Sensual love deceives one as to the nature of heavenly love; it could not do so alone, but since it unconsciously has the element of heavenly love within it, it can do so.

Modesty forbids what the law does not.

I think that it’s okay to be mad at someone who hurt you. This isn’t about, like, the pageantry of trying to seem like nothing affects you.

When I was president, I announced and I still maintain that I can live with Roe v. Wade. I did everything I possibly could as president under that ruling, which I don’t think ought to be changed, to minimize the need for abortions. I think every abortion is a result of a horrible series of errors on the part of people involved.

The rulers of the state are the only persons who ought to have the privilege of lying, either at home or abroad; they may be allowed to lie for the good of the state.

I sang a song at my sister’s wedding. My mother forced me into that, too. But that one felt all right.

There is no hope unmingled with fear, and no fear unmingled with hope.

It is curious that physical courage should be so common in the world and moral courage so rare.

Just as your car runs more smoothly and requires less energy to go faster and farther when the wheels are in perfect alignment, you perform better when your thoughts, feelings, emotions, goals, and values are in balance.

Doing what’s right isn’t the problem. It is knowing what’s right.

Good men must not obey the laws too well.

A sad soul can kill quicker than a germ.

Non-cooperation with evil is as much a duty as is cooperation with good.

In memory everything seems to happen to music.

Every art and every inquiry, and similarly every action and choice, is thought to aim at some good; and for this reason the good has rightly been declared to be that at which all things aim.

I’m a songwriter. Everything affects me.

Lawless are they that make their wills their law.

We are much beholden to Machiavel and others, that write what men do, and not what they ought to do.

When you fish for love, bait with your heart, not your brain.

A poem begins as a lump in the throat, a sense of wrong, a homesickness, a lovesickness.

Love has reasons which reason cannot understand.

When the President does it, that means that it’s not illegal.

I was nauseous and tingly all over. I was either in love or I had smallpox.

A President’s hardest task is not to do what is right, but to know what is right.

Polygamy: An endeavour to get more out of life than there is in it.

It disturbs me no more to find men base, unjust, or selfish than to see apes mischievous, wolves savage, or the vulture ravenous.

I feel, as a songwriter, it’s one of the hardest things to do – to sit down and say how you feel.

And if you’re horrible to me I’m going to write a song about you and you are not going to like it. That’s how I operate.

Men never do evil so completely and cheerfully as when they do it from religious conviction.

Man weeps to think that he will die so soon; woman, that she was born so long ago.

Love is an interesting thing.

Love and doubt have never been on speaking terms.

Fear is real, but so is love.

I can say I’d honestly rather be happy than have 30 to 40 songs that I’ve written about these thrilling, exciting, horrible, unhappy times.

In the world of money and investing, you must learn to control your emotions.

You see, you are a spirit, you have a soul, and you live in a body. You have emotions, you have thoughts, you have a will, and you have a conscience. You are a complex being! And Jesus came to heal every single part of you. There’s not one part that He doesn’t want to make completely whole.

It’s so hard to know what to do when one wishes earnestly to do right.

I do think there should be some regulations on AI.

Irrespective of age, we mourn for those loved and lost. Mourning is one of the deepest expressions of pure love.

I believe that every right implies a responsibility; every opportunity, an obligation; every possession, a duty.

The ideas I stand for are not mine. I borrowed them from Socrates. I swiped them from Chesterfield. I stole them from Jesus. And I put them in a book. If you don’t like their rules, whose would you use?

Charity creates a multitude of sins.

It’s better to be good than evil, but one achieves goodness at a terrific cost.

I like the way the stories of my relationships sound to music more than the way they look in print, in gossip columns or in me talking about them in interviews. I think it’s a better way of telling the stories.

We tell lies, yet it is easy to show that lying is immoral.

I kind of love Cole Miller.

A man is truly ethical only when he obeys the compulsion to help all life which he is able to assist, and shrinks from injuring anything that lives.

Always recognize that human individuals are ends, and do not use them as means to your end.

When I am angry I can pray well and preach well.

The human voice can never reach the distance that is covered by the still small voice of conscience.

I’m not ashamed to say I fear something.

O! Let me not be mad, not mad, sweet heaven; keep me in temper; I would not be mad!

Of course I get hurt.

Laughter and tears are both responses to frustration and exhaustion. I myself prefer to laugh, since there is less cleaning up to do afterward.

Cry if you have a compound fracture, by all means. Or if your grandpa died. But otherwise, save it for your pillow.

What women need to understand is that men don’t communicate. It’s not intentional or on purpose. We’re just not as emotional. You ladies feel like you have to express yourselves.