Nobody is as powerful as we make them out to be.

We never fully grasp the import of any true statement until we have a clear notion of what the opposite untrue statement would be.

Applause is a receipt, not a bill.

There is no unique picture of reality.

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

In memory everything seems to happen to music.

A man who says that no patriot should attack the war until it is over… is saying no good son should warn his mother of a cliff until she has fallen.

Lo! The poor Indian, whose untutored mind sees God in clouds, or hears him in the wind.

I’ve never understood why people consider youth a time of freedom and joy. It’s probably because they have forgotten their own.

Power is the great aphrodisiac.

I grow daily to honour facts more and more, and theory less and less. A fact, it seems to me, is a great thing; a sentence printed, if not by God, then at least by the Devil.

The totalitarian, to me, is the enemy – the one that’s absolute, the one that wants control over the inside of your head, not just your actions and your taxes.

Why should anybody be interested in some old man who was a failure?

The health of the eye seems to demand a horizon. We are never tired, so long as we can see far enough.

Nobody enjoys the ‚little show about nothing‘ humor more than me, but that is never the way I look at it.

The world is seldom what it seems; to man, who dimly sees, realities appear as dreams, and dreams realities.

Think twice before you speak, because your words and influence will plant the seed of either success or failure in the mind of another.

Great emergencies and crises show us how much greater our vital resources are than we had supposed.

Movies are fun, but they are no cure for cancer.

You see the film, you might be entertained, and if it’s not a great film, it loses its power very quickly. I think even simply acceptable books stay with us a lot longer.

The higher a man stands, the more the word vulgar becomes unintelligible to him.

I have seen enough of one war never to wish to see another.

A lot of us grow up and we grow out of the literal interpretation that we get when we’re children, but we bear the scars all our life. Whether they’re scars of beauty or scars of ugliness, it’s pretty much in the eye of the beholder.

Surely a long life must be somewhat tedious, since we are forced to call in so many trifling things to help rid us of our time, which will never return.

Mastering others is strength. Mastering yourself is true power.

No story is the same to us after a lapse of time; or rather we who read it are no longer the same interpreters.

I like gaps; all my stories have gaps. It seems this is the way people’s lives present themselves.

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 now and then in finding a smoother pebble or prettier shell than ordinary, while the great ocean of truth lay all undiscovered before me.

I mean Facebook is no longer a company, it’s a country. 2 billion users. It can influence what we think, what we believe, how we vote, what we buy, even how we feel.

No honest writer today can possibly avoid being influenced by Freud through his pioneering work into the Unconscious and by the influence of those discoveries on the scientific, philosophic, and artistic work of his contemporaries: but not, by any means, necessarily through Freud’s own writing.

You can tell more about a person by what he says about others than you can by what others say about him.

Those who create are rare; those who cannot are numerous. Therefore, the latter are stronger.

Four hostile newspapers are more to be feared than a thousand bayonets.

If two men agree on everything, you may be sure that one of them is doing the thinking.

Power is like being a lady… if you have to tell people you are, you aren’t.

If everything isn’t black and white, I say, ‚Why the hell not?‘

Opinion is like a pendulum and obeys the same law. If it goes past the centre of gravity on one side, it must go a like distance on the other; and it is only after a certain time that it finds the true point at which it can remain at rest.

What people see on court is another side of me; it’s not me.

The future is something which everyone reaches at the rate of 60 minutes an hour, whatever he does, whoever he is.

When I was young, poverty was so common that we didn’t know it had a name.

There are many things that happen every day that we could murmur about if we let ourselves go there. But they really aren’t worth the effort it takes to get upset and gripe about it.

The world is never quiet, even its silence eternally resounds with the same notes, in vibrations which escape our ears. As for those that we perceive, they carry sounds to us, occasionally a chord, never a melody.

If my world were to cave in tomorrow, I would look back on all the pleasures, excitements and worthwhilenesses I have been lucky enough to have had. Not the sadness, not my miscarriages or my father leaving home, but the joy of everything else. It will have been enough.

Don’t be afraid to give your best to what seemingly are small jobs. Every time you conquer one it makes you that much stronger. If you do the little jobs well, the big ones will tend to take care of themselves.

What it lies in our power to do, it lies in our power not to do.

These people are very unskilled in arms… with 50 men they could all be subjected and made to do all that one wished.

The strong man is the one who is able to intercept at will the communication between the senses and the mind.

It takes tremendous discipline to control the influence, the power you have over other people’s lives.

It’s a real strength for me that I’ve never minded the training process. It’s something I enjoy. I really like being in the gym or, certainly, on the field.

Pessimism leads to weakness, optimism to power.

All modern revolutions have ended in a reinforcement of the power of the State.

When somewhat at a distance, I cannot hear the high tones of instruments, voices. In speaking, it is not surprising that there are people who have never noticed it, for as a rule I am absent-minded, and they account for it in that way.

The future influences the present just as much as the past.

To a profound pessimist about life, being in danger is not depressing.

For people who may think they know, or have snippets of who I am, you can attack that person. That’s part of being a public figure.

I found that the corridors of power in Delhi were littered with lobbies of various kinds.

When you have kids, you see life through different eyes. You feel love more deeply and are maybe a little more compassionate. It’s inevitable that that would make its way into your songwriting.

When you go to war as a boy, you have a great illusion of immortality. Other people get killed, not you… Then, when you are badly wounded the first time, you lose that illusion, and you know it can happen to you.

It is a paradox that every dictator has climbed to power on the ladder of free speech. Immediately on attaining power each dictator has suppressed all free speech except his own.

It is the eye of other people that ruin us. If I were blind I would want, neither fine clothes, fine houses or fine furniture.

Follow your honest convictions and be strong.