Moral authority is never retained by any attempt to hold on to it. It comes without seeking and is retained without effort.

He that would live in peace and at ease must not speak all he knows or all he sees.

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.

The true sign of intelligence is not knowledge but imagination.

Americans… still believe in an America where anything’s possible – they just don’t think their leaders do.

One Buddha is not enough; we need to have many Buddhas.

I don’t think that a leader can control, to any great extent, his destiny. Very seldom can he step in and change the situation if the forces of history are running in another direction.

We should take care not to make the intellect our goal; it has, of course, powerful muscles, but no personality.

One thing I hope I’ll never be is drunk with my own power. And anybody who says I am will never work in this town again.

Access to the Vedas is the greatest privilege this century may claim over all previous centuries.

Stay humble and be concerned for the less fortunate.

When you want a thing done, ‚Don’t do it yourself‘ is a good motto for Scoutmasters.

If it is not right do not do it; if it is not true do not say it.

Steve Jobs‘ ability to focus in on a few things that count, get people who get user interface right, and market things as revolutionary are amazing things.

There is nothing more difficult to take in hand, more perilous to conduct, or more uncertain in its success, than to take the lead in the introduction of a new order of things.

The best thing is to always keep honest people around, because when you have a bunch of yes men around that know that you’re making a mistake but let you go on with it, that’s when it ruins your mind state as an artist.

When you’re older you want to learn from other people.

All my big mistakes are when I try to second-guess or please an audience. My work is always stronger when I get very selfish about it.

I can’t pretend that I’m brave and that I can beat the whole world.

Use power to help people. For we are given power not to advance our own purposes nor to make a great show in the world, nor a name. There is but one just use of power and it is to serve people.

Character is always known. Thefts never enrich; alms never impoverish; murder will speak out of stone walls.

A leader does not deserve the name unless he is willing occasionally to stand alone.

I’m not a god – I do bad things.

If we had more hell in the pulpit, we would have less hell in the pew.

There are massive efforts on the part of the internet’s corporate owners to try to direct it to become a technique of marginalisation and control.

To live a pure unselfish life, one must count nothing as one’s own in the midst of abundance.

To know anything well involves a profound sensation of ignorance.

Man is the only creature that refuses to be what he is.

Accept everything about yourself – I mean everything, You are you and that is the beginning and the end – no apologies, no regrets.

Wisely, and slow. They stumble that run fast.

He who possesses art and science has religion; he who does not possess them, needs religion.

Beware of the man who does not return your blow: he neither forgives you nor allows you to forgive yourself.

If you pursue good with labor, the labor passes away but the good remains; if you pursue evil with pleasure, the pleasure passes away and the evil remains.

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

The true measure of a man is how he treats someone who can do him absolutely no good.

Not brute force but only persuasion and faith are the kings of this world.

My celebrity status allows me an opportunity, allows me a pulpit to preach and reach out to the people. Not even always preaching but just leading, motivating them by being a leader.

A loving heart is the truest wisdom.

Youth is a blunder; Manhood a struggle, Old Age a regret.

There is more treasure in books than in all the pirate’s loot on Treasure Island.

For one swallow does not make a summer, nor does one day; and so too one day, or a short time, does not make a man blessed and happy.

I am not one who was born in the possession of knowledge; I am one who is fond of antiquity, and earnest in seeking it there.

Now from a distance, I look back on what the Corps taught me: to think like men of action, and to act like men of thought!

Who controls the past controls the future. Who controls the present controls the past.

He who has so little knowledge of human nature as to seek happiness by changing anything but his own disposition will waste his life in fruitless efforts.

We are second-hand people. We have lived on what we have been told, either guided by our inclinations, our tendencies, or compelled to accept by circumstances and environment. We are the result of all kinds of influences, and there is nothing new in us, nothing that we have discovered for ourselves: nothing original, pristine, clear.

I’ll die a crazy old man!

The future influences the present just as much as the past.

Only a life lived for others is a life worthwhile.

One of the things that was really an issue was I did not want to just be a woman secretary of state. I wanted to be a secretary of a state who was a woman, but not just chosen for that particular reason.

The United States tyrannizes and pillages the globalized world with its political, economic, technological, and military might.

When you’re not engaged in the day-to-day struggles that everybody feels, you slowly start losing touch. And I think it’s important for the people in the White House to have a finger on the pulse.

I think carrying moral baggage is very dangerous for an artist. If you have a duty, it’s to be true and not cover up the cracks.

Charity bestowed upon those who are worthy of it is like good seed sown on a good soil that yields an abundance of fruits. But alms given to those who are yet under the tyrannical yoke of the passions are like seed deposited in a bad soil. The passions of the receiver of the alms choke, as it were, the growth of merits.

A President needs political understanding to run the government, but he may be elected without it.

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.

Let us all be brave enough to die the death of a martyr, but let no one lust for martyrdom.

As a leader, you have to have the ability to assimilate new information and understand that there might be a different view.

In past generations, people would try to play younger than they really are. My trick is, I don’t try to play younger than I really am.

Every book you pick up has its own lesson or lessons, and quite often the bad books have more to teach than the good ones.

I love that I can talk to my fans through Twitter, to cut out the middle man. Because I’ve done interviews where my words have gotten twisted, so it’s nice to be able to have things coming straight from me.