Meditation is a state of mind which looks at everything with complete attention, totally, not just parts of it. And no one can teach you how to be attentive. If any system teaches you how to be attentive, then you are attentive to the system, and that is not attention.

I think I am smart unless I am really, really in love, and then I am ridiculously stupid.

The first and greatest victory is to conquer yourself; to be conquered by yourself is of all things most shameful and vile.

Not everyone can see the truth, but he can be it.

I’m tired of fighting. I’ve always known that I can’t be an action star all my life.

The greatest magnifying glasses in the world are a man’s own eyes when they look upon his own person.

We are never deceived; we deceive ourselves.

If you cannot concentrate, you are not so happy.

My public is growing up just as I am. After all, I’m not 19 anymore and if I stick with the sex bit, who will be paying to see me when I’m 50?

Obstacles are those frightful things you see when you take your eyes off your goal.

I just feel like, with rappers, there’s so much complacency. It’s like, ‚Oh, I’m a rapper. I’m successful. I make money. That’s all that matters.‘ But there’s a lot of stuff going on in the world. Whether or not you’re aware of it, it’s happening.

We can live without religion and meditation, but we cannot survive without human affection.

If you see oppression of the poor, and justice and righteousness trampled in a country, do not be astounded.

When we go out to the country and just sit there, what we’re really doing is just switching off various kinds of alertness that we don’t have to use. When we do that, we are stopping being defensive. We are no longer shutting ourselves off from different types of experiences, we are welcoming them in.

The mind is a superb instrument if used rightly. Used wrongly, however, it becomes very destructive. To put it more accurately… you usually don’t use it at all. It uses you.

Is it not important to find out how to listen not only to what is being said but to everything – to the noise in the streets, to the chatter of birds, to the noise of the tramcar, to the restless sea, to the voice of your husband, to your wife, to your friends, to the cry of a baby?

I briefly did therapy, but after a while, I realised it is just like a farmer complaining about the weather. You can’t fix the weather – you just have to get on with it.

Undeserved praise causes more pangs of conscience later than undeserved blame, but probably only for this reason, that our power of judgment are more completely exposed by being over praised than by being unjustly underestimated.

The true art of memory is the art of attention.

It’s very important that we re-learn the art of resting and relaxing. Not only does it help prevent the onset of many illnesses that develop through chronic tension and worrying; it allows us to clear our minds, focus, and find creative solutions to problems.

I would rather be able to appreciate things I can not have than to have things I am not able to appreciate.

I am in the fighting game. I don’t care about anything else. I don’t watch the news, I don’t care about politics, I don’t care about other sports. I don’t care about anything I don’t need to care about. This is my sport: it is my life. I study it; I think about it all the time. Nothing else matters.

There is no need for temples, no need for complicated philosophies. My brain and my heart are my temples; my philosophy is kindness.

Everyone now knows how to find the meaning of life within himself. But mankind wasn’t always so lucky. Less than a century ago, men and women did not have easy access to the puzzle boxes within them.

More compassionate mind, more sense of concern for other’s well-being, is source of happiness.

I never make conscious decisions.

For a long time, I thought I was ugly and disfigured. This made me shy and timid, and I often reacted to insults that were not intended.

In this business you have to develop a thick skin, but I’m always going to feel everything. It’s my nature.

Don’t ever criticize yourself. Don’t go around all day long thinking, ‚I’m unattractive, I’m slow, I’m not as smart as my brother.‘ God wasn’t having a bad day when he made you… If you don’t love yourself in the right way, you can’t love your neighbour. You can’t be as good as you are supposed to be.

To know, is to know that you know nothing. That is the meaning of true knowledge.

I tend not to really think about what other people say. I’d rather just try and focus on what I’m doing, try and win basically.

How about a little noise. How do you expect a man to putt?

If we have no peace, it is because we have forgotten that we belong to each other.

We are not what we are, nor do we treat or esteem each other for such, but for what we are capable of being.

The stories are not autobiographical, but they’re personal in that way. I seem to know only the things that I’ve learned. Probably some things through observation, but what I feel I know surely is personal.

People intoxicate themselves with work so they won’t see how they really are.

Always make those above you feel comfortably superior. In your desire to please or impress them, do not go too far in displaying your talents or you might accomplish the opposite – inspire fear and insecurity.

What you have outside you counts less than what you have inside you.

90 percent of my time is spent on 10 percent of the world.

It occurred to me that at one point it was like I had two diseases – one was Alzheimer’s, and the other was knowing I had Alzheimer’s.

What a wee little part of a person’s life are his acts and his words! His real life is led in his head, and is known to none but himself.

In the normal flow of a conversation, our attention is divided. We hear parts of what other people are saying, in order to follow and keep the conversation going. At the same time, we’re planning what we’ll say next, some exciting story of our own.

Don’t ever play yourself.

Everything’s intentional. It’s just filling in the dots.

Anger is an acid that can do more harm to the vessel in which it is stored than to anything on which it is poured.

When I was young, an eccentric uncle decided to teach me how to lie. Not, he explained, because he wanted me to lie, but because he thought I should know how it’s done so I would recognise when I was being lied to.

If you start to think of your physical and moral condition, you usually find that you are sick.

Since everything is in our heads, we had better not lose them.

This is the first age that’s ever paid much attention to the future, which is a little ironic since we may not have one.

Knowing that you are going to die is, I suspect, the beginning of wisdom.

We feel and know that we are eternal.

I’m really trying to dredge up what one might call intellectual and moral material. For example, when do you realize that you are an American? What age does that happen to you? When do you realize what religion your parents practice? When does it all become conscious? I was interested in exploring all of that.

In the West, as well as some other parts of the world, the personal sense of ego tends to predominate, whereas in other areas, there is a more collective sense of ego. This collective ego emphasizes the ‚we‘ rather than the ‚I.‘

That’s the biggest gift I can give anybody: ‚Wake up, be aware of who you are, what you’re doing and what you can do to prevent yourself from becoming ill.‘

The purest and most thoughtful minds are those which love colour the most.

Wisdom ceases to be wisdom when it becomes too proud to weep, too grave to laugh, and too selfish to seek other than itself.

It is the quality of the moment, not the number of days, or events, or of actors, that imports.

Each doctor makes a much, much more important job than I do, but at the end, nobody talks about him. We all know about it, but we don’t really think about it.

None but ourselves can free our minds.

Never let yesterday use up too much of today.

Times and conditions change so rapidly that we must keep our aim constantly focused on the future.