No such thing as a man willing to be honest – that would be like a blind man willing to see.

I long for the time when all human history is taught as one history, because it really is.

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

We continue to shape our personality all our life. If we knew ourselves perfectly, we should die.

It’s useful to go out of this world and see it from the perspective of another one.

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

Usually, people have a tendency to be caught in the worries concerning the future or in the regret concerning the past. There is some kind of energy that is pushing them to run, and they are not able to establish themselves in the present moment.

Find out who you are. And do it on purpose.

I really don’t pay attention to the outside world when I’m incarcerated, because being in prison is like being in a different world. So I don’t pay attention to what’s going on outside of jail, because it’s all beyond my control.

Yeah, I did see where the people dissing me were coming from. But, it’s like, anything that happened in the past between black and white, I can’t really speak on it, because I wasn’t there. I don’t feel like me being born the color I am makes me any less of a person.

You can have no dominion greater or less than that over yourself.

See things from the boy’s point of view.

I think the word rich is all relative.

While you’re saving your face, you’re losing your ass.

Sometimes we look back and 10 years from now we think, ‚Boy, those were great old days.‘ Well, you know, we’re living in the good old days.

When I understand myself, I understand you, and out of that understanding comes love.

If I feel anxious every time someone is staring at me, well, I can’t control what they stare at, but my reaction is, I’m just not going to go outside the house. I’m going to stay in and chill. And when I do go out, I understand what comes along with that.

In oneself lies the whole world and if you know how to look and learn, the door is there and the key is in your hand. Nobody on earth can give you either the key or the door to open, except yourself.

The superior man does not, even for the space of a single meal, act contrary to virtue. In moments of haste, he cleaves to it. In seasons of danger, he cleaves to it.

I am a good listener. I think that came from my schooling.

People only see what they are prepared to see.

Heroes are not known by the loftiness of their carriage; the greatest braggarts are generally the merest cowards.

We used to wonder where war lived, what it was that made it so vile. And now we realize that we know where it lives… inside ourselves.

There’s no way to remove the observer – us – from our perceptions of the world.

We have one planet in our solar system that’s habitable, and that’s the Earth, and space travel can transform things back here for the better. First of all, by just having people go to space and look back on this fragile planet we live on. People have come back transformed and have done fantastic things.

Kids will remind you that, even though you’ve gone down a road 100 times, it’s brand new for them – and that’s healthy.

Use your health, even to the point of wearing it out. That is what it is for. Spend all you have before you die; do not outlive yourself.

I know where I’m going and I know the truth, and I don’t have to be what you want me to be. I’m free to be what I want.

Why do I talk about the benefits of failure? Simply because failure meant a stripping away of the inessential. I stopped pretending to myself that I was anything other than what I was, and began to direct all my energy into finishing the only work that mattered to me.

I don’t make people bend over backwards, and I don’t like that in people. I am definitely no diva.

Humility is to make a right estimate of one’s self.

If you get your ego in your way, you will only look to other people and circumstances to blame.

The trouble with having an open mind, of course, is that people will insist on coming along and trying to put things in it.

Don’t believe your friends when they ask you to be honest with them. All they really want is to be maintained in the good opinion they have of themselves.

A system of morality which is based on relative emotional values is a mere illusion, a thoroughly vulgar conception which has nothing sound in it and nothing true.

Character, in the long run, is the decisive factor in the life of an individual and of nations alike.

This happiness consisted of nothing else but the harmony of the few things around me with my own existence, a feeling of contentment and well-being that needed no changes and no intensification.

The things I talk about and explain couldn’t happen – yet, they don’t seem impossible – you could say I talk about the world in an abstract perspective. But then, the world is basically insane – and it’s trying to pass itself off as being a sane place. I show it for what it is.

I’ve had a few semi-toxic relationships, but it’s not what I look for when I’m seeing someone.

Experience which was once claimed by the aged is now claimed exclusively by the young.

I have practically no private life. I’m already used to this and ready for it. Yes, sometimes it is hard, but it is the choice I made.

I was never particularly fond of my voice.

Behavior is the mirror in which everyone shows their image.

They consider me to have sharp and penetrating vision because I see them through the mesh of a sieve.

The world can criticize me, but l can always criticize it back.

Almost everybody is born a genius and buried an idiot.

We are taught you must blame your father, your sisters, your brothers, the school, the teachers – but never blame yourself. It’s never your fault. But it’s always your fault, because if you wanted to change you’re the one who has got to change.

Realize deeply that the present moment is all you ever have. Make the Now the primary focus of your life.

May we never confuse honest dissent with disloyal subversion.

The moment you think you understand a great work of art, it’s dead for you.

Things have never been more like the way they are today in history.

I have never left another senator out to dry. Never.

I love that I can tell the truth and have people laugh at it.

If people think nature is their friend, then they sure don’t need an enemy.

It could be – and it has been argued, in my view rather plausibly, though neuroscientists don’t like it – that neuroscience for the last couple hundred years has been on the wrong track.

Against my will, in the course of my travels, the belief that everything worth knowing was known at Cambridge gradually wore off. In this respect my travels were very useful to me.

Truth is by nature self-evident. As soon as you remove the cobwebs of ignorance that surround it, it shines clear.

History is written by the victors.

A tomb now suffices him for whom the whole world was not sufficient.

Rebellion without truth is like spring in a bleak, arid desert.

No man should escape our universities without knowing how little he knows.