I’ve had a few semi-toxic relationships, but it’s not what I look for when I’m seeing someone.

You must be the change you wish to see in the world.

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

Of course, like anybody I repeat myself endlessly, but I don’t know that I’m doing it, usually.

A woman can bring a new love to each man she loves, providing there are not too many.

I don’t know what drives me to succeed.

I am easily satisfied with the very best.

Whatever talents I possess may suddenly diminish or suddenly increase. I can with ease become an ordinary fool. I may be one now. But it doesn’t do to upset one’s own vanity.

You will find as you grow older that courage is the rarest of all qualities to be found in public life.

Your vision will become clear only when you can look into your own heart. Who looks outside, dreams; who looks inside, awakes.

I don’t do things for the response or for the controversy. I just live my life.

At eighteen our convictions are hills from which we look; at forty-five they are caves in which we hide.

The object of a New Year is not that we should have a new year. It is that we should have a new soul and a new nose; new feet, a new backbone, new ears, and new eyes. Unless a particular man made New Year resolutions, he would make no resolutions. Unless a man starts afresh about things, he will certainly do nothing effective.

Everybody has a purpose.

I’m the type person, my safe place to be emotional is the booth.

It’s very unnatural to be someone for so many people. But of course it’s very nice.

The man who is dissatisfied with himself, what can he do?

I am not handsome or sexy. Of course, it’s not like I am hopeless.

Eventually you get to this point where you understand what you want to do and get across and sound like.

There is only one corner of the universe you can be certain of improving, and that’s your own self.

Men must know their limitations.

Me, as a person, I grow. I’m like a chameleon. You know? That is a gift and a curse for me. But more so a gift, because it never puts me in a box.

Individuals need to be willing to face truth about their attitudes, behaviors, even what we want out of life.

To me, business isn’t about wearing suits or pleasing stockholders. It’s about being true to yourself, your ideas and focusing on the essentials.

We are long before we are convinced that happiness is never to be found, and each believes it possessed by others, to keep alive the hope of obtaining it for himself.

A man may be a fool and not know it, but not if he is married.

I don’t have much positive to say about motor neuron disease, but it taught me not to pity myself because others were worse off, and to get on with what I still could do. I’m happier now than before I developed the condition.

Every thought you produce, anything you say, any action you do, it bears your signature.

We are never deceived; we deceive ourselves.

Any hand that I’ve shaken, any person that I met when I was Joe Blow, now that I’m this guy Kevin Hart, has come back. That’s why I treat everybody with respect. I’m always a nice pleasant guy to meet because when they come back to you, they remember.

Many people have an intense feeling about what they’re best at. Too often, they’re driven away from it by other people.

It’s not the load that breaks you down, it’s the way you carry it.

I’m confident in who I am. I’ve come to a place in my life where I’ve accepted things that are me, as opposed to feeling pressure to explain myself to people around me. That’s just the way I’ve always tried to be. It didn’t change when I became a star.

I’m addicted to placebos.

The personal ego already has a strong element of dysfunction, but the collective ego is, frequently, even more dysfunctional, to the point of absolute insanity.

I continuously go further and further learning about my own limitations, my body limitation, psychological limitations. It’s a way of life for me.

A man cannot be comfortable without his own approval.

I discovered me in the library. I went to find me in the library.

Have the humility to learn from those around you.

Everything you need you already have. You are complete right now, you are a whole, total person, not an apprentice person on the way to someplace else. Your completeness must be understood by you and experienced in your thoughts as your own personal reality.

Vanity can create a very cruel space for you if you don’t know how to manage it.

The single most powerful thing I can be is to be myself.

There is but one cause of human failure. And that is man’s lack of faith in his true Self.

Everything you are against weakens you. Everything you are for empowers you.

Each one has to find his peace from within. And peace to be real must be unaffected by outside circumstances.

For me, being raised in a free America made all the difference.

You don’t look out there for God, something in the sky, you look in you.

Remorse sleeps during prosperity but awakes bitter consciousness during adversity.

My music seems to have a bigger mission than I have, which is very soothing but also very strange because people see more in me than I see, which can be terrifying.

Timidity makes a person modest. It makes him or her say, ‚I’m not worthy of being written up in the record of deeds in heaven or on earth.‘ Timidity keeps people from their good. They are afraid to say, ‚Yes, I deserve it.‘

I hope not to define myself by suffering.

No, I’m not a French designer either. I’m from nowhere. I’m a European, old European is all I am.

Do what you love. Know your own bone; gnaw at it, bury it, unearth it, and gnaw it still.

Our necessities never equal our wants.

When I was writing ‚Kitchen Confidential,‘ I was in my 40s, I had never paid rent on time, I was 10 years behind on my taxes, I had never owned my own furniture or a car.

I think, a lot of times when you meet someone, you feel like you need to appear like you’re not interested in them so that they’ll be more interested in you. But what happens when you start showing him that you actually like him? What’s he gonna do then? Play the tape forward; how do you keep a guy like that? I don’t want to sign up for that.

It’s hard to be clear about who you are when you are carrying around a bunch of baggage from the past. I’ve learned to let go and move more quickly into the next place.

I know that I am intelligent, because I know that I know nothing.

Do the thing you fear to do and keep on doing it… that is the quickest and surest way ever yet discovered to conquer fear.

People deal too much with the negative, with what is wrong. Why not try and see positive things, to just touch those things and make them bloom?

Self-knowledge comes from knowing other men.