No accurate thinker will judge another person by that which the other person’s enemies say about him.

The thing about delirium is you think it’s great, but it actually isn’t.

But we try to pretend, you see, that the external world exists altogether independently of us.

We view things not only from different sides, but with different eyes; we have no wish to find them alike.

Reality leaves a lot to the imagination.

The artist forges himself to the others, midway between the beauty he cannot do without and the community he cannot tear himself away from. That is why true artists scorn nothing: they are obliged to understand rather than to judge.

People are not disturbed by things, but by the view they take of them.

A great social success is a pretty girl who plays her cards as carefully as if she were plain.

Don’t wait for the last judgment – it takes place every day.

I think the 24-hour news cycle has helped exaggerate the differences between the parties. You can always find someone on TV somewhere carping about something. That didn’t happen 20 years ago.

As a matter of self-preservation, a man needs good friends or ardent enemies, for the former instruct him and the latter take him to task.

People really had a problem with my disinterest in submission. They had a problem with my intellect, and they had a problem with my choice of lovers. They had a problem with my choice of everything.

It’s true that obscenity is a matter of taste and in the eye of the beholder.

I can see, and that is why I can be happy, in what you call the dark, but which to me is golden. I can see a God-made world, not a manmade world.

The less you know, the more you believe.

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 is far harder to kill a phantom than a reality.

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

The intellectual is different from the ordinary man, but only in certain sections of his personality, and even then not all the time.

I don’t want people to think of me as sexy.

I’ve had big record label presidents look me in the face and say, ‚Your music sucks, you don’t know who you are, your music is all over the place, and we don’t know how to market this stuff. Pick a lane and come back to us.‘

Do good to your friends to keep them, to your enemies to win them.

I like America, just as everybody else does. I love America, I gotta say that. But America will be judged.

They’re right to think that about me, because I’m the person most likely to sleep with my female fans, I genuinely love other women. And I think they know that.

The more you are talked about the less powerful you are.

What I think is fair to say is that, coming out of the Republican camp, there have been efforts to suggest that perhaps I’m not who I say I am when it comes to my faith – something which I find deeply offensive, and that has been going on for a pretty long time.

No object is so beautiful that, under certain conditions, it will not look ugly.

People only see what they are prepared to see.

A puritan is a person who pours righteous indignation into the wrong things.

He that is giddy thinks the world turns round.

Forgive your enemies, but never forget their names.

I like criticism. It makes you strong.

A celebrated people lose dignity upon a closer view.

This is an important book, the critic assumes, because it deals with war. This is an insignificant book because it deals with the feelings of women in a drawing-room.

Every man prefers belief to the exercise of judgment.

I know now that there is no one thing that is true – it is all true.

Vanity is but the surface.

When you are spiritually connected, you are not looking for occasions to be offended, and you are not judging and labeling others. You are in a state of grace in which you know you are connected to God and thus free from the effects of anyone or anything external to yourself.

Many a man’s reputation would not know his character if they met on the street.

The U.S. military is not war weary. Our military draws strength from confronting our enemies when clear policy objectives are set and we are fully resourced for the fight.

It takes a great deal of bravery to stand up to our enemies, but just as much to stand up to our friends.

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.

An unexciting truth may be eclipsed by a thrilling lie.

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.

I define nothing. Not beauty, not patriotism. I take each thing as it is, without prior rules about what it should be.

Everything that we see is a shadow cast by that which we do not see.

A friend is one who has the same enemies as you have.

The Christian resolution to find the world ugly and bad has made the world ugly and bad.

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.

A particularly beautiful woman is a source of terror. As a rule, a beautiful woman is a terrible disappointment.

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.

Lo! The poor Indian, whose untutored mind sees God in clouds, or hears him in the wind.

Let the refining and improving of your own life keep you so busy that you have little time to criticize others.

To announce that there must be no criticism of the president… is morally treasonable to the American public.

The universe as we know it is a joint product of the observer and the observed.

Changes are not unusual – I mean, most movies, when they release them, they make changes. But somehow, when I make the slightest change, everybody thinks it’s the end of the world.

When I left Dortmund, I said it’s not important what people think when you come in but what they think when you leave.

We often refuse to accept an idea merely because the tone of voice in which it has been expressed is unsympathetic to us.

What you see, but can’t see over is as good as infinite.

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.

They say that God is everywhere, and yet we always think of Him as somewhat of a recluse.