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

The intention and outcome of vulnerability is trust, intimacy and connection. The outcome of oversharing is distrust, disconnection – and usually a little judgment.

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

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

Reality is a sliding door.

I find it amusing that I’m on the Internet now, because I’ve criticized it, but mainly I’ve criticized it on the basis of, ‚What are you going to do with it?‘

September 11 shocked many Americans into an awareness that they had better pay much closer attention to what the U.S. government does in the world and how it is perceived. Many issues have been opened for discussion that were not on the agenda before. That’s all to the good.

Praise undeserved, is satire in disguise.

For me, the world that I inhabit in reality is probably a very different world than the one people expect that I would be in.

In my experience, many people confuse being cowardly with being nice.

Dignity, and even holiness too, sometimes, are more questions of coat and waistcoat than some people imagine.

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.

You’re president, if you conclude my judgment is not the right judgment, I abide by that, but I want an opportunity to have an input.

People tend to dwell more on negative things than on good things. So the mind then becomes obsessed with negative things, with judgments, guilt and anxiety produced by thoughts about the future and so on.

Suppose I criticise Iran. What impact does that have? The only impact it has is in fortifying those who want to carry out policies I don’t agree with, like bombing.

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.

If we choose, we can live in a world of comforting illusion.

As soon as I hear a sound, it always suggests a mood to me.

My biggest criticism is how can people be so easily satisfied? Even people with talent.

The sway of alcohol over mankind is unquestionably due to its power to stimulate the mystical faculties of human nature, usually crushed to earth by the cold facts and dry criticisms of the sober hour.

Small is the number of people who see with their eyes and think with their minds.

If I am judged for my work, many myths about me as an autocrat or otherwise would become clearer. I feel false propaganda will not last, and truth will ultimately prevail.

Do I not destroy my enemies when I make them my friends?

We make our friends; we make our enemies; but God makes our next door neighbour.

The foolish man conceives the idea of ‚self.‘ The wise man sees there is no ground on which to build the idea of ‚self;‘ thus, he has a right conception of the world and well concludes that all compounds amassed by sorrow will be dissolved again, but the truth will remain.

Saints should always be judged guilty until they are proved innocent.

You say that you are my judge; I do not know if you are; but take good heed not to judge me ill, because you would put yourself in great peril.

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.

All knowledge or form conception is evoked through the medium of the eye, either in response to disturbances directly received on the retina or to their fainter secondary effects and reverberations. Other sense organs can only call forth feelings which have no reality of existence and of which no conception can be formed.

I’m going to let God be the judge of who goes to heaven and hell.

Character is like a tree and reputation like a shadow. The shadow is what we think of it; the tree is the real thing.

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.

I was ill, and everyone could see it but me.

Consult your friend on all things, especially on those which respect yourself. His counsel may then be useful where your own self-love might impair your judgment.

I don’t think it’s a good advert for any restaurant, a fat chef, and secondly, who wants to eat a dessert when the chef’s a fat pig.

The darkness is really out there. It’s not something that’s in my head, just. It’s in my work because it’s in the world.

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.

The mainstream is always under attack.

What we wish, we readily believe, and what we ourselves think, we imagine others think also.

What is straight? A line can be straight, or a street, but the human heart, oh, no, it’s curved like a road through mountains.

People see things differently and remember things differently. It’s why if somebody robs a liquor store and there are four witnesses they’ll often disagree.

People do not wish to appear foolish; to avoid the appearance of foolishness, they are willing to remain actually fools.

I mean, if you didn’t get it or if you didn’t feel like you enjoyed it, sometimes that experience can change.

We misjudge risk if we feel we have some control over it, even if it’s an illusory sense of control.

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

It was one of those evenings when men feel that truth, goodness and beauty are one. In the morning, when they commit their discovery to paper, when others read it written there, it looks wholly ridiculous.

There is a soak-the-rich attitude in the air, a feeling that if you have a lot of money you must have got it by some ghastly means. I can quite happily say there was never any family money. All the money we got was mine, just from writing books.

The intelligent man finds almost everything ridiculous, the sensible man hardly anything.

I don’t think the Christian Right dominates America in the way some in the media believe they do.

There’s people that appreciate what I do; there’s people that criticize it.

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 mind making jokes, but I don’t want to look like one.

Is it weird in here, or is it just me?

The moment a person forms a theory, his imagination sees in every object only the traits which favor that theory.

To be in love is merely to be in a state of perceptual anesthesia – to mistake an ordinary young woman for a goddess.

Some men do think I’m a psycho bunny-boiler.

Time is an illusion. Lunchtime doubly so.

I feel like everything we do comes down to how it looks. Even no branding is branding. For example, you had no face or image to put to my music at first. That was branding.

Especially when you’re at a high level in an organization, criticism can be devastating to an employee. I prefer to praise employees for what they’re doing right, and it tends to lead to them doing more of the same. Not always, but it’s the way I choose to bet.

It is the nature of the artist to mind excessively what is said about him. Literature is strewn with the wreckage of men who have minded beyond reason the opinions of others.

People only see what they are prepared to see.