No problem can be solved from the same level of consciousness that created it.

Transforming yourself into a deep listener will not only prove more amusing as you open your mind to their mind, but you will gain the most invaluable lessons about human psychology.

I grew up in a funny way.

If you don’t like something, change it. If you can’t change it, change your attitude.

I’m all about evolution. I’m the first person to judge myself.

Although the circumstances of our lives may seem very disengaged, with me standing here as the First Lady of the United States of America and you just getting through school, I want you to know we have very much in common. For nothing in my life ever would have predicted that I would be standing here as the first African-American First Lady.

I’m interested in the dream and subconscious mind, the peculiar dream-like quality of our lives, sometime nightmare quality of our lives.

When I was writing ‚Kitchen Confidential,‘ I was in my 40s, I had never paid rent on time, I was 10 years behind on my taxes, I had never owned my own furniture or a car.

Think of yourself as on the threshold of unparalleled success. A whole, clear, glorious life lies before you. Achieve! Achieve!

I do not know myself, and God forbid that I should.

What most persons consider as virtue, after the age of 40 is simply a loss of energy.

Emotions are continually affecting our thought processes and decisions, below the level of our awareness. And the most common emotion of them all is the desire for pleasure and the avoidance of pain.

My one regret in life is that I am not someone else.

One of the things I definitely think of as a driver of me is fear. And it’s fear of failure, fear of being overtaken.

We are for the most part more lonely when we go abroad among men than when we stay in our chambers. A man thinking or working is always alone, let him be where he will.

There is no birth of consciousness without pain.

There is a fine balance between honoring the past and losing yourself in it. For example, you can acknowledge and learn from mistakes you made, and then move on and refocus on the now. It is called forgiving yourself.

My purpose is to help people look at themselves and begin to shift their concepts. Remember, we are not our country, our race, or religion. We are eternal spirits. Seeing ourselves as spiritual beings without label is a way to transform the world and reach a sacred place for all of humanity.

He who knows himself is enlightened.

I was brought up to try to see what was wrong and right it. Since I am a writer, writing is how I right it.

It’s stasis that kills you off in the end, not ambition.

I admire people who destroy themselves.

Responsibility is the price of freedom.

Take a course in good water and air; and in the eternal youth of Nature you may renew your own. Go quietly, alone; no harm will befall you.

Men take only their needs into consideration – never their abilities.

When I was younger, I was testing myself and questioning everything, but now it’s less about that and more about these are the years of my life with my family.

People can try to reinvent themselves. I don’t think you can really change who you are, though, because who you are is pretty much where you came from and what you’ve done up to now.

I was brought up to believe that the worst thing you could do was ‚call attention to yourself,‘ or ‚think you were smart.‘ My mother was an exception to this rule and was punished by the early onset of Parkinson’s disease.

If two smart, intelligent, clever guys sit together on a table, and you both want the same, where can be the problem? We all want to be successful.

I really have had to swallow my own prejudice at times.

It didn’t even occur to me that I’m the last person in the world who should play salsa or Brazilian music.

I never looked at my mantel and envisioned an MVP trophy sitting there. This is pretty crazy.

A sense of the universe, a sense of the all, the nostalgia which seizes us when confronted by nature, beauty, music – these seem to be an expectation and awareness of a Great Presence.

I still consider myself a little, fat kid from Hawaii.

Technology is destructive only in the hands of people who do not realize that they are one and the same process as the universe.

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

The young think that failure is the Siberian end of the line, banishment from all the living, and tend to do what I then did – which was to hide.

I’ve learned that we all change constantly. It’s rare to find that person who is growing with you in the same way at the same time, who encourages you to grow.

I got my own back.

It is a mistake to think you can solve any major problems just with potatoes.

I was lousy in school. Real screwed-up. A moron. I was antisocial and didn’t bother with the other kids. A really bad student. I didn’t have any brains. I didn’t know what I was doing there. That’s why I became an actor.

Not to go back is somewhat to advance, and men must walk, at least, before they dance.

I didn’t see it then, but it turned out that getting fired from Apple was the best thing that could have ever happened to me. The heaviness of being successful was replaced by the lightness of being a beginner again, less sure about everything. It freed me to enter one of the most creative periods of my life.

If you’re in business or politics, you need to have an intense understanding of what’s going on around you.

Have you not learned that strength comes to an ordinary soul when given an extraordinary calling?

I think writing really helps you heal yourself. I think if you write long enough, you will be a healthy person. That is, if you write what you need to write, as opposed to what will make money, or what will make fame.

There are three things extremely hard: steel, a diamond, and to know one’s self.

One of the greatest lessons of my own life was learning to turn the inner rampage of hatred and anger toward my own father for his reprehensible behavior and abandonment of his family into an inner reaction more closely aligned with God and God-realized love.

No problem can withstand the assault of sustained thinking.

Nurture your minds with great thoughts. To believe in the heroic makes heroes.

I don’t think there’s anyone who would say they don’t want or need more of God’s power in their life.

We deem those happy who from the experience of life have learnt to bear its ills without being overcome by them.

Always do whatever’s next.

I have a strong feeling that I shall be glad when I am dead and done for – scrapped at last to make room for somebody better, cleverer, more perfect than myself.

When I was old enough to change my name, I changed it to Mr. T so that the first word out of someone’s mouth was ‚Mister,‘ a sign of respect.

My father wasn’t around when I was a kid, and I used to always say, ‚Why me? Why don’t I have a father? Why isn’t he around? Why did he leave my mother?‘ But as I got older I looked deeper and thought, ‚I don’t know what my father was going through, but if he was around all the time, would I be who I am today?‘

I always try to do as much as I can do. I’m never a person that does not enough, because I’d regret not doing enough and think I probably could have done more. I probably go too far and have to reel myself back in, which works in some things, and other things it doesn’t work.

As long as poverty, injustice and gross inequality persist in our world, none of us can truly rest.

The answer is, who you are cannot be defined through thinking or mental labels or definitions, because it’s beyond that. It is the very sense of being, or presence, that is there when you become conscious of the present moment. In essence, you and what we call the present moment are, at the deepest level, one.

Some days I totally appreciate everything that’s happening to me, and some days I feel everyone’s waiting for me to mess up.

Narrow your life down to this moment. Your life situation may be full of problems – most life situations are – but find out if you have a problem at this moment. Do you have a problem now?