Memory is deceptive because it is colored by today’s events.

There is no memory or retentive faculty based on lasting impression. What we designate as memory is but increased responsiveness to repeated stimuli.

Suspicion always haunts the guilty mind.

The components of anxiety, stress, fear, and anger do not exist independently of you in the world. They simply do not exist in the physical world, even though we talk about them as if they do.

The eyes of others our prisons; their thoughts our cages.

Insanity in individuals is something rare – but in groups, parties, nations and epochs, it is the rule.

Humans have a knack for choosing precisely the things that are worst for them.

Neurosis is always a substitute for legitimate suffering.

Dreams have only one owner at a time. That’s why dreamers are lonely.

If a work of art is rich and vital and complete, those who have artistic instincts will see its beauty, and those to whom ethics appeal more strongly than aesthetics will see its moral lesson. It will fill the cowardly with terror, and the unclean will see in it their own shame.

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.

It was really hard for them to intimidate me. They felt I was intimidating. One of the growers had a name for me: I think it was ‚dragon lady‘ or something like it.

When I’m on stage, it’s really intense. My mind is going a million miles an hour, trying to remember my act, trying to say it all the right way. It’s funny how different it looks and how it’s happening. There are three Fellini circuses in my head, and outwardly it looks like I’m going to get a bagel.

I imagine one of the reasons people cling to their hates so stubbornly is because they sense, once hate is gone, they will be forced to deal with pain.

Frank and explicit – that is the right line to take when you wish to conceal your own mind and confuse the minds of others.

Why are women… so much more interesting to men than men are to women?

There is only one way… to get anybody to do anything. And that is by making the other person want to do it.

Anybody can be specific and obvious. That’s always been the easy way. It’s not that it’s so difficult to be unspecific and less obvious; it’s just that there’s nothing, absolutely nothing, to be specific and obvious about.

We see the world not as it is, but as we are.

How is it possible that a being with such sensitive jewels as the eyes, such enchanted musical instruments as the ears, and such fabulous arabesque of nerves as the brain can experience itself anything less than a god.

Is the babe young? When I behold it, it seems more venerable than the oldest man.

The biggest problem with every art is by the use of appearance to create a loftier reality.

Why does your mind conform? Have you ever asked? Are you aware that you are conforming to a pattern? It doesn’t matter what that pattern is, whether you have established a pattern for yourself or it has been established for you.

Beauty is all very well at first sight; but who ever looks at it when it has been in the house three days?

Part of the reason for the ugliness of adults, in a child’s eyes, is that the child is usually looking upwards, and few faces are at their best when seen from below.

In so far as the mind is stronger than the body, so are the ills contracted by the mind more severe than those contracted by the body.

I never gave anybody hell! I just told the truth and they thought it was hell.

We awaken in others the same attitude of mind we hold toward them.

The greater intellect one has, the more originality one finds in men. Ordinary persons find no difference between men.

In too many communities, too many young men of color are left behind and seen only as objects of fear. Through initiatives like My Brother’s Keeper, I’m personally committed to changing both perception and reality.

For people who may think they know, or have snippets of who I am, you can attack that person. That’s part of being a public figure.

Every spirit makes its house, and we can give a shrewd guess from the house to the inhabitant.

You can’t be in politics unless you can walk in a room and know in a minute who’s for you and who’s against you.

To study the abnormal is the best way of understanding the normal.

Science is nothing but perception.

The sensitivity of men to small matters, and their indifference to great ones, indicates a strange inversion.

The eye sees what it brings the power to see.

The world we see that seems so insane is the result of a belief system that is not working. To perceive the world differently, we must be willing to change our belief system, let the past slip away, expand our sense of now, and dissolve the fear in our minds.

There is but an inch of difference between a cushioned chamber and a padded cell.

I don’t see myself as beautiful, because I can see a lot of flaws. People have really odd opinions. They tell me I’m skinny, as if that’s supposed to make me happy.

If you’re treated a certain way you become a certain kind of person. If certain things are described to you as being real they’re real for you whether they’re real or not.

Glance into the world just as though time were gone: and everything crooked will become straight to you.

Design is a funny word. Some people think design means how it looks. But of course, if you dig deeper, it’s really how it works.

It takes a smart man to play dumb.

If you will have a person enslaved, the first thing you must do is convince yourself that the person is subhuman. The second thing you have to do is convince your allies so you’ll have some help, and the third and probably unkindest cut of all is to convince that person that he or she is subhuman and deserves it.

The science of psychology has been far more successful on the negative than on the positive side… It has revealed to us much about man’s shortcomings, his illnesses, his sins, but little about his potentialities, his virtues, his achievable aspirations, or his psychological health.

Hatred is an affair of the heart; contempt that of the head.

It is really funny when people say you’d be obvious for a great villain.

We think that the world is a solid, vivid place, full of shape and colour and solid objects like this table and this microphone and so on, but we actually create that in our heads out of the bits of information that hit the back of our eyeballs or hit our eardrums or hit our tongues or whatever.

I think Mick Jagger would be astounded and amazed if he realized that to many people he is not a sex symbol, but a mother image.

The image is one thing and the human being is another. It’s very hard to live up to an image, put it that way.

You are the sum total of everything you’ve ever seen, heard, eaten, smelled, been told, forgot – it’s all there. Everything influences each of us, and because of that I try to make sure that my experiences are positive.

The hardest thing to see is what is in front of your eyes.

He who lives in our mind is near though he may actually be far away; but he who is not in our heart is far though he may really be nearby.

Telling us to obey instinct is like telling us to obey ‚people.‘ People say different things: so do instincts. Our instincts are at war… Each instinct, if you listen to it, will claim to be gratified at the expense of the rest.

Propaganda is amazing. People can be led to believe anything.

If you tell the truth, you don’t have to remember anything.

Heathenism is a state of mind. You can take it that I’m referring to one who does not see his world. He has no mental light. He destroys almost unwittingly. He cannot feel any Gods presence in his life. He is the 21st century man.

Men are moved by two levers only: fear and self interest.

The fact is, when men carry the same ideals in their hearts, nothing can isolate them – neither prison walls nor the sod of cemeteries. For a single memory, a single spirit, a single idea, a single conscience, a single dignity will sustain them all.

The propagandist’s purpose is to make one set of people forget that certain other sets of people are human.