Once people are aware of your presence, and perhaps vaguely intrigued, you need to stir their interest before it settles on someone else.

So you cannot, as a Christian, walk away from Africa.

If you live only in one culture for the first 20 years of your life, you become conditioned without knowing it.

As soon as I got out there I felt a strange relationship with the pitcher’s mound. It was as if I’d been born out there. Pitching just felt like the most natural thing in the world. Striking out batters was easy.

We need every person on Earth to acknowledge that climate change is real and encourage each other and our leaders to address the challenge.

Meditation is a state of mind which looks at everything with complete attention, totally, not just parts of it. And no one can teach you how to be attentive. If any system teaches you how to be attentive, then you are attentive to the system, and that is not attention.

Behold a worthy sight, to which the God, turning his attention to his own work, may direct his gaze. Behold an equal thing, worthy of a God, a brave man matched in conflict with evil fortune.

Give whatever you are doing and whoever you are with the gift of your attention.

To us also, through every star, through every blade of grass, is not God made visible if we will open our minds and our eyes.

All writers are going to have to learn more about science, because it’s such an interesting part of their environment.

It is not necessary that you leave the house. Remain at your table and listen. Do not even listen, only wait. Do not even wait, be wholly still and alone. The world will present itself to you for its unmasking, it can do no other, in ecstasy it will writhe at your feet.

Kids are watching us. I experience it every single day. They hang on my every word, what I wear, what I say.

There isn’t any formula or method. You learn to love by loving – by paying attention and doing what one thereby discovers has to be done.

The eye sees what it brings the power to see.

In dwelling, live close to the ground. In thinking, keep to the simple. In conflict, be fair and generous. In governing, don’t try to control. In work, do what you enjoy. In family life, be completely present.

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

You know, my main reaction to this money thing is that it’s humorous, all the attention to it, because it’s hardly the most insightful or valuable thing that’s happened to me.

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.

By stopping flying, you don’t only reduce your own carbon footprint but also that sends a signal to other people around you that the climate crisis is a real thing and that helps push a political movement.

You might be the funniest guy in the world, but if you don’t have anything to talk about, people are eventually going to gravitate towards the guy that’s actually saying something.

Don’t be afraid to challenge the pros, even in their own backyard.

Baseball is like a poker game. Nobody wants to quit when he’s losing; nobody wants you to quit when you’re ahead.

I sometimes ask people, ‚Can you be aware of your own presence? Not the thoughts that you’re having, not the emotions that you’re having, but the very presence of your very being?‘ You become aware of your own presence by sensing the entire energy field in your body that is alive. And that is the totality of your presence.

The arts have only ever interested a small minority of people, which acted as a kind of nursery to support artists.

Sometimes I just sit still and enjoy God’s presence.

Time is something that interests me a whole lot – past and present, and how the past appears as people change.

In war, you win or lose, live or die – and the difference is just an eyelash.

Meditation is to be aware of every thought and of every feeling, never to say it is right or wrong, but just to watch it and move with it. In that watching, you begin to understand the whole movement of thought and feeling. And out of this awareness comes silence.

Rule number one is: Beat your team-mate.

Happiness is within the reach of everyone, rich or poor. Yet comparatively few people are happy. I believe the reason for this is that the majority don’t recognize happiness even when it is within their grasp.

He shines in the second rank, who is eclipsed in the first.

Most humans are never fully present in the now, because unconsciously they believe that the next moment must be more important than this one. But then you miss your whole life, which is never not now.

When you love someone, the best thing you can offer is your presence. How can you love if you are not there?

In the normal flow of a conversation, our attention is divided. We hear parts of what other people are saying, in order to follow and keep the conversation going. At the same time, we’re planning what we’ll say next, some exciting story of our own.

When you get into your car, shut the door and be there for just half a minute. Breathe, feel the energy inside your body, look around at the sky, the trees. The mind might tell you, ‚I don’t have time.‘ But that’s the mind talking to you. Even the busiest person has time for 30 seconds of space.

Whenever you do a thing, act as if all the world were watching.

Marathon running, like golf, is a game for players, not winners. That is why Callaway sells golf clubs and Nike sells running shoes. But running is unique in that the world’s best racers are on the same course, at the same time, as amateurs, who have as much chance of winning as your average weekend warrior would scoring a touchdown in the NFL.

I think the high-tech industry is used to developing new things very quickly. It’s the Silicon Valley way of doing business: You either move very quickly and you work hard to improve your product technology, or you get destroyed by some other company.

Look at the way celebrities and politicians are using Facebook already. When Ashton Kutcher posts a video, he gets hundreds of pieces of feedback. Maybe he doesn’t have time to read them all or respond to them all, but he’s getting good feedback and getting a good sense of how people are thinking about that and maybe can respond to some of it.

I’m interested in two things. I’m interested in truth and I’m interested in fairness.

The wisest hustler can suddenly fall for the worst tramp and lose all of his money on her. The hustler is aware of his own weaknesses and openings to con. This awareness is his edge.

Frankly, I think that the news industry is critically important because it points out things and surfaces truths that can often be uncomfortable. I think that that’s working, and the spotlight has been pointed on things that we have a responsibility to do better, and I accept that.

I had not expected ‚A Brief History of Time‘ to be a best seller. It was my first popular book and aroused a great deal of interest. Initially, many people found it difficult to understand. I therefore decided to try to write a new version that would be easier to follow.

For in the end, freedom is a personal and lonely battle; and one faces down fears of today so that those of tomorrow might be engaged.

It is a neck-and-neck race between Mr. Gray and myself who shall complete our apparatus first. He has the advantage over me in being a practical electrician – but I have reason to believe that I am better acquainted with the phenomena of sound than he is – so that I have an advantage there.

If a subject excites us, if it stirs our deepest curiosity, or if we have to learn because the stakes are high, we pay much more attention. What we absorb sinks in.

What we have found in this country, and maybe we’re more aware of it now, is one problem that we’ve had, even in the best of times, and that is the people who are sleeping on the grates, the homeless, you might say, by choice.

And know that I am with you always; yes, to the end of time.

If you are surrounded by your competition and you are outworking these people, outmaneuvering these people, it’s hard not to let your confidence take over. It just builds and builds and builds.

Are we a nation that educates the world’s best and brightest in our universities, only to send them home to create businesses in countries that compete against us? Or are we a nation that encourages them to stay and create jobs, businesses, and industries right here in America?

So much of left-wing thought is a kind of playing with fire by people who don’t even know that fire is hot.

Voyagers discover that the world can never be larger than the person that is in the world; but it is impossible to foresee this, it is impossible to be warned.

When I see a story, I ask: is this something I’d like to be in? Is this something I’d like to see? And if I’d like to see it, would I like to tell it?

We must do everything in our power to cease the behaviour that makes children everywhere feel afraid.

I used to go missing a lot… Miss Canada, Miss United Kingdom, Miss World.

When I came up to bat with three men on and two outs in the ninth, I looked in the other team’s dugout and they were already in street clothes.

I got into science fiction by being interested in astronomy first.

Do your work with your whole heart, and you will succeed – there’s so little competition.

Haitian rice farmers are quite efficient, but they can’t compete with U.S. agribusiness that relies on a huge government subsidy, thanks to Ronald Reagan’s free market enthusiasms.

Zen does not confuse spirituality with thinking about God while one is peeling potatoes. Zen spirituality is just to peel the potatoes.

It is hard to interest those who have everything in those who have nothing.