No, I’m not a French designer either. I’m from nowhere. I’m a European, old European is all I am.

Pessimism is a luxury that a Jew can never allow himself.

I wonder how many decisions we make every day. I believe it’s probably hundreds. We decide whether or not to get out of bed, what we’ll eat, what we’ll do, what we’ll think about, what we’ll say… and on and on.

Enlightened people seldom or never possess a sense of responsibility.

The paradox of education is precisely this – that as one begins to become conscious one begins to examine the society in which he is being educated.

What lies behind us and what lies ahead of us are tiny matters compared to what lives within us.

As long as you blame someone or something else – something outside you that’s bigger than you are – as the source of your problems, the problems won’t get solved.

Man is least himself when he talks in his own person. Give him a mask, and he will tell you the truth.

I wanted to imbue Ziggy with real flesh and blood and muscle, and it was imperative that I find Ziggy and be him.

The one thing that I keep learning over and over again is that I don’t know nothing. I mean, that’s my life lesson.

Meditation is to be aware of every thought and of every feeling, never to say it is right or wrong, but just to watch it and move with it. In that watching, you begin to understand the whole movement of thought and feeling. And out of this awareness comes silence.

We want to answer this classical question, who am I? So I think that most of our works are for art, or whatever we do, including science or religion, tried to answer that question.

If man makes himself a worm he must not complain when he is trodden on.

I feel like you get more bees with honey. But that doesn’t mean I don’t get frustrated in my life. My way of dealing with frustration is to shut down and to think and speak logically.

None of the records I make are ever a deliberate construction – they’re always an expression of who I am at the time and where I am in my life.

I’m not intelligent. I’m not arrogant. I’m just like the people who read my books. I used to have a jazz club, and I made the cocktails and I made the sandwiches. I didn’t want to become a writer – it just happened.

We have a tendency to condemn people who are different from us, to define their sins as paramount and our own sinfulness as being insignificant.

The question of whether or not there is a God or truth or reality or whatever you like to call it, can never be answered by books, by priests, philosopher’s or saviours. Nobody and nothing can answer the question but you yourself, and that is why you must know yourself – Immaturity lies only in total ignorance of self.

I don’t have any secrets I need kept any more.

I have lost my mental faculties but am perfectly well.

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.

Polygamy: An endeavour to get more out of life than there is in it.

I am not the humblest person in the world. I admit that.

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.

To understand a name you must be acquainted with the particular of which it is a name.

What a liberation to realize that the ‚voice in my head‘ is not who I am. ‚Who am I, then?‘ The one who sees that.

I’m too busy acting like I’m not Naive. I’ve seen it all, I was here first.

One thing about me is I try to be honest.

I’ve always felt that if I examine myself too much, I’ll find out what I know and don’t know, and I’ll burst the bubble. I’ve gotten so lucky relying on my animal instincts, I’d rather keep a little bit of the animal alive.

I happen to be a big fan of Western civilization; I think it beats the hell out of tyranny and starvation.

Hatred is something peculiar. You will always find it strongest and most violent where there is the lowest degree of culture.

I never make conscious decisions.

To be conscious that you are ignorant of the facts is a great step to knowledge.

It’s hard to articulate how I think about myself as a public figure.

If art is to nourish the roots of our culture, society must set the artist free to follow his vision wherever it takes him.

The question isn’t, ‚What do we want to know about people?‘, It’s, ‚What do people want to tell about themselves?‘

The people who truly know me know what I’m like. There have been people who try to say things that aren’t fair, and I check them. And then they don’t like me because I checked them.

Everybody is entertained to death.

One is still what one is going to cease to be and already what one is going to become. One lives one’s death, one dies one’s life.

The more people I reach, the more people there are that have opinions about me. Not everyone loves me, but I have to be okay no matter what they think about me.

There is as much difference between the counsel that a friend giveth, and that a man giveth himself, as there is between the counsel of a friend and of a flatterer. For there is no such flatterer as is a man’s self.

If small things have the power to disturb you, then who you think you are is exactly that: small.

Talking much about oneself can also be a means to conceal oneself.

The objective I propose is quite simple to state: to foster the infrastructure of democracy – the system of a free press, unions, political parties, universities – which allows a people to choose their own way to develop their own culture, to reconcile their own differences through peaceful means.

You might not have the things you want, but if you check carefully, you got all you need.

Our necessities never equal our wants.

I’ve always been – you know, my personality is motivating and encouraging. And so I’m just being who God made me to be.

Either you think, or else others have to think for you and take power from you, pervert and discipline your natural tastes, civilize and sterilize you.

The equal right of all citizens to health, education, work, food, security, culture, science, and wellbeing – that is, the same rights we proclaimed when we began our struggle, in addition to those which emerge from our dreams of justice and equality for all inhabitants of our world – is what I wish for all.

You use a glass mirror to see your face; you use works of art to see your soul.

A great many people think they are thinking when they are merely rearranging their prejudices.

There is only one corner of the universe you can be certain of improving, and that’s your own self.

The real power of the Buddha was that he had so much love. He saw people trapped in their notions of small separate self, feeling guilty or proud of that self, and he offered revolutionary teachings that resounded like a lion’s roar, like a great rising tide, helping people to wake up and break free from the prison of ignorance.

I have the true feeling of myself only when I am unbearably unhappy.

So there’s no guarantee if you like the music you will empathize with the culture and the people who made it. It doesn’t necessarily happen. I think it can, but it doesn’t necessarily happen. Which is kind of a shame.

I realized, ‚Yo, I can’t do anything in moderation. I don’t know how.‘

Nobody has ever convinced me that race is real.

I was born with a great gift, and sometimes with that comes a destructive streak.

I do suffer from depression, I suppose. Which isn’t that unusual. You know, a lot of people do.

It’s different from being 21 and you think there’s endless amount of opportunities. At 33, the ending is much, much closer.

Pride deafens us to the advice or warnings of those around us.