No one is laughable who laughs at himself.

The left paw has done me well over the years. I’m not a scientist, I’m a martial artist.

An unemployed court jester is nobody’s fool.

The abdomen is the reason why man does not readily take himself to be a god.

I do not know what I may appear to the world, but to myself I seem to have been only like a boy playing on the seashore, and diverting myself in now and then finding a smoother pebble or a prettier shell than ordinary, whilst the great ocean of truth lay all undiscovered before me.

The most happy man is he who knows how to bring into relation the end and beginning of his life.

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.

Prayer doesn’t just change things – it changes us. If we are diligent in seeking God, slowly and surely we become better people.

I don’t know what drives me to succeed.

Great grief does not of itself put an end to itself.

An Englishman thinks he is moral when he is only uncomfortable.

Smiling makes me feel weak and not in control and not powerful and small.

The limits of the possible can only be defined by going beyond them into the impossible.

The worst disease which can afflict executives in their work is not, as popularly supposed, alcoholism; it’s egotism.

Scratch a Yale man with both hands and you’ll be lucky to find a coast-guard. Usually you find nothing at all.

By taking responsibility for how you choose to respond to anything or anyone, you’re aligning yourself with the beautiful dance of life.

Any fool can criticize, condemn and complain – and most fools do.

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.

I want everybody to understand that I am an American Negro first before I am a member of any political party.

‚Educational‘ refers to the process, not the object. Although, come to think of it, some of my teachers could easily have been replaced by a cheeseburger.

Man is an idea, and a precious small idea once he turns his back on love.

My neighbor has a circular driveway… he can’t get out.

To know, is to know that you know nothing. That is the meaning of true knowledge.

I think that people just have this core desire to express who they are. And I think that’s always existed.

We are what we pretend to be, so we must be careful what we pretend to be.

When you love and accept yourself, when you know who really cares about you, and when you learn from your mistakes, then you stop caring about what people who don’t know you think.

You’ll never find a better sparring partner than adversity.

I’ve always felt like there was a lot of hype around me even when there wasn’t. I felt like everyone was talking about me even when no one was talking about me.

Don’t let your ego get too close to your position, so that if your position gets shot down, your ego doesn’t go with it.

For me, money is not my definition of success. Inspiring people is a definition of success.

Virtue she finds too painful an endeavour, content to dwell in decencies for ever.

Failure is simply a few errors in judgment, repeated every day.

There are going to be things I’m not going to be great at, times when I make mistakes, 100%.

It’s a funny old world.

The major value in life is not what you get. The major value in life is what you become.

Therapy? I don’t need that. The roles that I choose are my therapy.

The aim of a joke is not to degrade the human being, but to remind him that he is already degraded.

It makes no sense to worry about things you have no control over because there’s nothing you can do about them, and why worry about things you do control? The activity of worrying keeps you immobilized.

When you know a thing, to hold that you know it, and when you do not know a thing, to allow that you do not know it – this is knowledge.

In 1969, I gave up women and alcohol – it was the worst 20 minutes of my life.

New knowledge is the most valuable commodity on earth. The more truth we have to work with, the richer we become.

When you’re coming up with new material, it’s not always gonna be good. The only way to learn is for it not to get a laugh, so you can adjust it and come back the next day to see if it’s working right. Next time, you might get a different laugh. You’re constantly rebuilding.

We have all had the experience of finding that our reactions and perhaps even our deeds have denied beliefs we thought were ours.

Let go of yesterday.

Sometimes I catch myself stooping, and whenever I am like that, I am sure something is not quite right.

I said I was ‚The Greatest,‘ I never said I was the smartest!

Relationships are the hallmark of the mature person.

I didn’t always have 14,000 people wanting to hang out with me on a Saturday night.

To remain a credible leader, I must always work first, hardest, and longest on changing myself. This is neither easy nor natural, but it is essential.

I need to keep working on myself for a while.

I was the first woman to burn my bra – it took the fire department four days to put it out.

There is no need for temples, no need for complicated philosophies. My brain and my heart are my temples; my philosophy is kindness.

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

We are shaped by our thoughts; we become what we think. When the mind is pure, joy follows like a shadow that never leaves.

I think a big test we all face in life on a regular basis is that discouragement test. Life’s not always fair, but I believe if you keep doing the right thing, God will get you to where you are.

A question that sometimes drives me hazy: am I or are the others crazy?

A man who has not passed through the inferno of his passions has never overcome them.

There is no person so severely punished, as those who subject themselves to the whip of their own remorse.

And obviously, from our own personal point of view, the principal challenge is a personal challenge.

Somewhere deep down there’s a decent man in me, he just can’t be found.

It is unwise to be too sure of one’s own wisdom. It is healthy to be reminded that the strongest might weaken and the wisest might err.