No passion so effectually robs the mind of all its powers of acting and reasoning as fear.

If you love something – and there are things that I love – you do want more and more and more of it, but that’s not the way to produce good work. So as an author, I need to write what I need to write.

Passion for fame: A passion which is the instinct of all great souls.

I love to dance, but my children tell me I shouldn’t. Can’t see why.

I wanted to write.

When we talk about understanding, surely it takes place only when the mind listens completely – the mind being your heart, your nerves, your ears – when you give your whole attention to it.

You can’t keep your mind on fighting when you’re thinking about a woman. You can’t keep your concentration. You feel like sleeping all the time.

We are not afraid to entrust the American people with unpleasant facts, foreign ideas, alien philosophies, and competitive values. For a nation that is afraid to let its people judge the truth and falsehood in an open market is a nation that is afraid of its people.

Let the fear of a danger be a spur to prevent it; he that fears not, gives advantage to the danger.

It is part of the general pattern of misguided policy that our country is now geared to an arms economy which was bred in an artificially induced psychosis of war hysteria and nurtured upon an incessant propaganda of fear.

In questions of science, the authority of a thousand is not worth the humble reasoning of a single individual.

We are more often frightened than hurt; and we suffer more from imagination than from reality.

I never had to choose a subject – my subject rather chose me.

I always loved advertising. If I hadn’t been in fashion, I’d have been in advertising.

I have found it easier to identify with the characters who verge upon hysteria, who were frightened of life, who were desperate to reach out to another person. But these seemingly fragile people are the strong people really.

A lot of people can’t stand touring but to me it’s like breathing. I do it because I’m driven to do it.

The art of acting consists in keeping people from coughing.

A lot of times, people have something that they’re afraid of. They’ve got a client that’s mad at them. They’ve got a project that’s due. And they let that stress hang over their head. I don’t let that happen.

I should like to lie at your feet and die in your arms.

In this business, by the time you realize you’re in trouble, it’s too late to save yourself. Unless you’re running scared all the time, you’re gone.

See, ‚A Time to Kill‘ was the one I got famous off of. Big ka-boom, over one weekend. After that, I did films that I really wanted to do.

I’ve had mixtapes that have been better than albums I’ve heard from other artists. I take my time; I put my heart into it.

When I am playing baseball, I give it all that I have on the ball field. When the ball game is over, I certainly don’t take it home. My little girl who is sitting out there wouldn’t know the difference between a third strike and a foul ball. We don’t talk about baseball at home.

When even one American – who has done nothing wrong – is forced by fear to shut his mind and close his mouth – then all Americans are in peril.

The realities are that, you know, as a black man, you know, Barack can get shot going to the gas station, you know.

I thought that I wrote songs and wrote music, and that was sort of what I thought I was best at doing. And because nobody else was ever doing my songs, I felt – you know, I had to go out and do them.

I like being a writer.

We are not angry with people we fear or respect, as long as we fear or respect them; you cannot be afraid of a person and also at the same time angry with him.

I just want to keep writing music.

Logically, harmony must come from the heart… Harmony very much based on trust. As soon as use force, creates fear. Fear and trust cannot go together.

My fear was not of death itself, but a death without meaning.

Our minds work in real time, which begins at the Big Bang and will end, if there is a Big Crunch – which seems unlikely, now, from the latest data showing accelerating expansion. Consciousness would come to an end at a singularity.

I have no special talent. I am only passionately curious.

Love is only one of many passions.

Because I believe in God and have faith in God, it doesn’t mean I am immortal. It doesn’t mean I am immune, as has been claimed. I am as scared as anyone of getting hurt, especially driving a Formula One car.

Bad food is made without pride, by cooks who have no pride, and no love. Bad food is made by chefs who are indifferent, or who are trying to be everything to everybody, who are trying to please everyone… Bad food is fake food… food that shows fear and lack of confidence in people’s ability to discern or to make decisions about their lives.

If passion drives you, let reason hold the reins.

Who would set a limit to the mind of man? Who would dare assert that we know all there is to be known?

You are only afraid if you are not in harmony with yourself. People are afraid because they have never owned up to themselves.

The terrorists are fighting freedom with all their cunning and cruelty because freedom is their greatest fear – and they should be afraid, because freedom is on the march.

I need drama in my life to keep making music.

With me poetry has not been a purpose, but a passion.

When everything works best, it’s not because you chose writing but because writing chose you. It’s when you’re mad with it, it’s when it’s stuffed in your ears, your nostrils, under your fingernails. It’s when there’s no hope but that.

I’d have stopped writing years ago if it were for the money.

If my films don’t show a profit, I know I’m doing something right.

There is not a truth existing which I fear… or would wish unknown to the whole world.

I guess you could say it’s always been my destiny to be a performer.

True art is characterized by an irresistible urge in the creative artist.

I loved photography and everybody said it was a crazy thing to do because in those days nobody made it into the film business. I mean, unless you were related to somebody there was no way in.

The coward wretch whose hand and heart Can bear to torture aught below, Is ever first to quail and start From the slightest pain or equal foe.

I play piano and ukulele, and I taught myself those things just because I wanted to play them.

When I got into this, I never thought about reviews. I never thought about what people would say about me, I was just a young guy who was excited to become a comedian and an actor, and I just wanted to get to do what I got to do.

The first real thought that I had of something that I might do was to write for car magazines, because I always had a car thing.

Sometimes I’ve called writing a disease. If so, I’m glad that it caught me.

The human mind is our fundamental resource.

We can fear things into existence. Fear looks into the future and imagines the worst that can happen.

Acting is just a way of making a living, the family is life.

Good governance with good intentions is the hallmark of our government. Implementation with integrity is our core passion.

You just don’t wake up one day and decide that you need to write songs.

I hold the world but as the world, Gratiano; A stage where every man must play a part, And mine is a sad one.

I felt I really wanted to back off from music completely and just work within the visual arts in some way. I started painting quite passionately at that time.