Neurosis is always a substitute for legitimate suffering.

It’s hard to practice compassion when we’re struggling with our authenticity or when our own worthiness is off-balance.

I found music to be the therapy of choice. I guess it is for a lot of people.

Kids who have an understanding of how and why their feelings are what they are are much more likely to talk to us about what’s happening, and they have better skills to work it out.

Not to expose your true feelings to an adult seems to be instinctive from the age of seven or eight onwards.

If I didn’t have my films as an outlet for all the different sides of me, I would probably be locked up.

There’s a scripture that says, ‚A merry heart doeth good like medicine.‘ I think that’s true, too.

I have lost my mental faculties but am perfectly well.

All these primary impulses, not easily described in words, are the springs of man’s actions.

Physical comforts cannot subdue mental suffering, and if we look closely, we can see that those who have many possessions are not necessarily happy. In fact, being wealthy often brings even more anxiety.

If you cannot concentrate, you are not so happy.

Hatred is active, and envy passive dislike; there is but one step from envy to hate.

I’m the only person of distinction who has ever had a depression named for him.

A deep sense of love and belonging is an irreducible need of all people. We are biologically, cognitively, physically, and spiritually wired to love, to be loved, and to belong. When those needs are not met, we don’t function as we were meant to. We break. We fall apart. We numb. We ache. We hurt others. We get sick.

It is always consoling to think of suicide: in that way one gets through many a bad night.

I became insane, with long intervals of horrible sanity.

A fanatic is a man who consciously over compensates a secret doubt.

I think women go crazy for a reason. It’s not like it just happens.

I look like a casual, laid-back guy, but it’s like a circus in my head.

You can be obsessed with the bad things people say and the good things; either way, you’re obsessed with yourself, and I’m not – you can become unhinged so easily.

Suspicion is not less an enemy to virtue than to happiness; he that is already corrupt is naturally suspicious, and he that becomes suspicious will quickly be corrupt.

You might be tough, but you can only be so tough for so long, you know what I mean? The brain can only take so much damage. The body can only take so much damage.

When the mind is thinking it is talking to itself.

Drag your thoughts away from your troubles… by the ears, by the heels, or any other way you can manage it.

There is nothing that wastes the body like worry, and one who has any faith in God should be ashamed to worry about anything whatsoever.

Be a force of love as often as you can and turn away negative thoughts whenever you feel them surface.

I think Buddhism should open the door of psychology and healing to penetrate more easily into the Western world.

Without exercise, I don’t feel like my head works right.

The collective unconscious consists of the sum of the instincts and their correlates, the archetypes. Just as everybody possesses instincts, so he also possesses a stock of archetypal images.

Paranoia is just another word for ignorance.

If I couldn’t laugh I just would go insane, If we couldn’t laugh we just would go insane, If we weren’t all crazy we would go insane.

I can analyze people’s intentions. Immediately. That’s just a warning. To everyone.

Despair is a narcotic. It lulls the mind into indifference.

I can’t stress to you enough how much I can relate to teens being cyberbullied. Something that helps me is looking at old videos of me and my friends from middle school, or videos of my family. I love watching funny videos of my favorite people – it really cheers me up.

Fantasy is an exercise bicycle for the mind. It might not take you anywhere, but it tones up the muscles that can. Of course, I could be wrong.

Some men have a necessity to be mean, as if they were exercising a faculty which they had to partially neglect since early childhood.

Worrying is like paying on a debt that may never come due.

If I feel anxious every time someone is staring at me, well, I can’t control what they stare at, but my reaction is, I’m just not going to go outside the house. I’m going to stay in and chill. And when I do go out, I understand what comes along with that.

If I relaxed, if I took my foot off the gas, I would probably die.

If you’re going to be crazy, you have to get paid for it or else you’re going to be locked up.

Throw off your worries when you throw off your clothes at night.

I just think it’s so important not to take yourself too seriously.

I try not to think about my life. I have no life. I need therapy.

I hold a lot of things in. I’m always making sure everybody is okay. I usually don’t rage; I usually don’t curse. So for me, it’s a great thing to be able to scream and say whatever I want.

I’ve often said there’s nothing better for the inside of a man than the outside of a horse.

I’m pretty calculating. I take stuff that I know appeals to people’s bad sides and match it up with stuff that appeals to their good sides.

When dealing with the insane, the best method is to pretend to be sane.

Protect your enthusiasm from the negativity of others.

I admire people who destroy themselves.

The secret of being miserable is to have leisure to bother about whether you are happy or not. The cure for it is occupation.

It is a big temptation to me, when I create a character for a novel, to say that he is what he is because of faulty wiring, or because of microscopic amounts of chemicals which he ate or failed to eat on that particular day.

Keep close to Nature’s heart… and break clear away, once in awhile, and climb a mountain or spend a week in the woods. Wash your spirit clean.

I’m going to stay active as long as I can politically, and with the Carter Center primarily, and if I’m able mentally and physically, will continue to be quite active.

There are minds so impatient of inferiority that their gratitude is a species of revenge, and they return benefits, not because recompense is a pleasure, but because obligation is a pain.

Music keeps the heart porous in many ways.

The young are permanently in a state resembling intoxication.

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.

I’m interested in the fact that the less secure a man is, the more likely he is to have extreme prejudice.

I can live for two months on a good compliment.

The less secure a man is, the more likely he is to have extreme prejudice.

Masses are always breeding grounds of psychic epidemics.