One can survive everything, nowadays, except death, and live down everything except a good reputation.

I just have an enthusiasm for life.

I was bullied as a boy – lots of kids are, but hopefully most of us get on with our lives and grow up.

Rather than love, than money, than fame, give me truth.

We’re in the last days, man – I truly, in my heart, believe that. It’s written. I could go on with biblical situations and things my grandma told me. But it’s about being at peace with myself and making good with the people around me.

You have to come to your closed doors before you get to your open doors… What if you knew you had to go through 32 closed doors before you got to your open door? Well, then you’d come to closed door number eight and you’d think, ‚Great, I got another one out of the way’… Keep moving forward.

I think that both parties should declare the debt limit as a political weapon of mass destruction which can’t be used. I mean, it is silly to have a country that has 237 years building up its reputation and then have people threaten to tear it down because they’re not getting some other matter.

It seems to me that if you or I must choose between two courses of thought or action, we should remember our dying and try so to live that our death brings no pleasure on the world.

Old age is like a plane flying through a storm. Once you’re aboard, there’s nothing you can do.

I don’t believe in the school of hard knocks, although I’ve had them. All that stuff about whatever doesn’t kill you makes you stronger is so not true. Do you know what makes you stronger? When people treat you and your art with dignity.

Keeping an active mind has been vital to my survival, as has been maintaining a sense of humor.

It has been said that man is a rational animal. All my life I have been searching for evidence which could support this.

Beyond a doubt truth bears the same relation to falsehood as light to darkness.

You can’t hold a man down without staying down with him.

Life’s too short to hang out with people who aren’t resourceful.

Gain may be temporary and uncertain; but ever while you live, expense is constant and certain: and it is easier to build two chimneys than to keep one in fuel.

What then is freedom? The power to live as one wishes.

When you’re in hell, you forget how great you really are because you’re suffering and you forget the great things you’ve done.

There is not enough love and goodness in the world to permit giving any of it away to imaginary beings.

To do nothing is also a good remedy.

There is more treasure in books than in all the pirate’s loot on Treasure Island.

Whether happiness may come or not, one should try and prepare one’s self to do without it.

My dear brothers and sisters, the joy we feel has little to do with the circumstances of our lives and everything to do with the focus of our lives.

Any man can make mistakes, but only an idiot persists in his error.

Whether you like it or not, you’re forced to come to the realisation that death is out there. But I don’t fear death, I’m a fatalist. I believe when it’s your time, that’s it. It’s the hand you’re dealt.

The least initial deviation from the truth is multiplied later a thousandfold.

No man can reveal to you nothing but that which already lies half-asleep in the dawning of your knowledge.

A wise man will make more opportunities than he finds.

Some people focus more on sonics. Some people focus more on story. I focus on both sonics and story, but music sometimes, just music itself, can turn into more of a maths problem. I guess everything in life is a math problem, but it can be more about an empirical route to getting the symmetry that you want, and this vibe, sonically.

I was set free because my greatest fear had been realized, and I still had a daughter who I adored, and I had an old typewriter and a big idea. And so rock bottom became a solid foundation on which I rebuilt my life.

When one door is closed, don’t you know, another is open.

Hatreds not vowed and concealed are to be feared more than those openly declared.

A radical generally meant a man who thought he could somehow pull up the root without affecting the flower. A conservative generally meant a man who wanted to conserve everything except his own reason for conserving anything.

For my own part, I would rather excel in knowledge of the highest secrets of philosophy than in arms.

Who sows virtue reaps honor.

The higher the sun ariseth, the less shadow doth he cast; even so the greater is the goodness, the less doth it covet praise; yet cannot avoid its rewards in honours.

Most of one’s life is one prolonged effort to prevent oneself thinking.

An inconvenience is an adventure wrongly considered.

Life is a journey. When we stop, things don’t go right.

Sometimes life hits you in the head with a brick. Don’t lose faith.

It is far better to grasp the universe as it really is than to persist in delusion, however satisfying and reassuring.

It is the nature of every person to error, but only the fool perseveres in error.

Courage is being scared to death… and saddling up anyway.

Art’s everything we hope life would be, a lot of times.

Founding a company is hard. Most of it isn’t smooth. You’ll have to make very hard decisions. You have to fire a few people. Therefore, if you don’t believe in your mission, giving up is easy. The majority of founders give up. But the best founders don’t give up.

For something to collapse, not all systems have to shut down. In most cases, just one system is enough. For example, the human body is a system of systems. If just one system, such as the cardiovascular system, shuts down, death follows.

As you get older, time speeds up but life slows down.

An overflow of good converts to bad.

If I were not a physicist, I would probably be a musician. I often think in music. I live my daydreams in music. I see my life in terms of music.

My mother was a public school teacher in Virginia, and we didn’t have any money, we just survived on happiness, on being a happy family.

The reason we want to go on and on is because we live in an impoverished present.

It pays to be obvious, especially if you have a reputation for subtlety.

The real problem is not why some pious, humble, believing people suffer, but why some do not.

I was taught that the human brain was the crowning glory of evolution so far, but I think it’s a very poor scheme for survival.

When I die, I’m gonna leave my body to science fiction.

He that sows thorns should never go barefoot.

He who has made a fair compact with poverty is rich.

A new philosophy generally means in practice the praise of some old vice.

To have a comeback, you have to have a setback.

My reputation grows with every failure.

When a train goes through a tunnel and it gets dark, you don’t throw away the ticket and jump off. You sit still and trust the engineer.