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.

People only see what they are prepared to see.

Through our own recovered innocence we discern the innocence of our neighbors.

I like being able to be on the inside of music, rather than on the outside listening to it.

Do not do unto others as you expect they should do unto you. Their tastes may not be the same.

Well, Art is Art, isn’t it? Still, on the other hand, water is water. And east is east and west is west and if you take cranberries and stew them like applesauce they taste much more like prunes than rhubarb does. Now you tell me what you know.

Life is grim, and we don’t have to be grim all the time.

Some cause happiness wherever they go; others whenever they go.

I think any life can be interesting, any surroundings can be interesting. I don’t think I could have been so brave if I had been living in a town, competing with people on what can be called a generally higher cultural level.

Sometimes one pays most for the things one gets for nothing.

I explain the law of compensation like this: ‚Returns are minimal in spite of massive effort at the start, yet returns can be massive with minimal effort over time.

I think we have to own the fears that we have of each other, and then, in some practical way, some daily way, figure out how to see people differently than the way we were brought up to.

Order without liberty and liberty without order are equally destructive.

I don’t think I would be interested in the climate at all if I had been like everyone else.

It was wonderful to find America, but it would have been more wonderful to miss it.

Man does not live by soap alone; and hygiene, or even health, is not much good unless you can take a healthy view of it or, better still, feel a healthy indifference to it.

Life is our dictionary.

For me, there are two types of people: the young and the experienced.

Every new opinion, at its starting, is precisely in a minority of one.

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.

Fame is like caviar, you know – it’s good to have caviar but not when you have it at every meal.

Though we travel the world over to find the beautiful, we must carry it with us or we find it not.

I supported Donald Trump.

I am such a political person.

For every moment of triumph, for every instance of beauty, many souls must be trampled.

A man must be both stupid and uncharitable who believes there is no virtue or truth but on his own side.

I have written too much history to have faith in it; and if anyone thinks I’m wrong, I am inclined to agree with him.

Half the world is composed of people who have something to say and can’t, and the other half who have nothing to say and keep on saying it.

I’ve never considered musical equipment very sacred.

Justice and power must be brought together, so that whatever is just may be powerful, and whatever is powerful may be just.

There is nothing either good or bad but thinking makes it so.

I’m rather kind of old school, thinking that when an artist does his work, it’s no longer his… I just see what people make of it.

It is the sign of a great mind to dislike greatness, and to prefer things in measure to things in excess.

Every wall is a door.

The world is before you and you need not take it or leave it as it was when you came in.

I know now that there is no one thing that is true – it is all true.

There may not be one Truth – there may be several truths – but saying that is not to say that reality doesn’t exist.

Life is a gamble. You can get hurt, but people die in plane crashes, lose their arms and legs in car accidents; people die every day. Same with fighters: some die, some get hurt, some go on. You just don’t let yourself believe it will happen to you.

Being happy is a matter of personal taste.

Mortality is very different when you’re 20 to when you’re 50.

Too much and too little wine. Give him none, he cannot find truth; give him too much, the same.

Freedom is the right to tell people what they do not want to hear.

Will not a tiny speck very close to our vision blot out the glory of the world, and leave only a margin by which we see the blot? I know no speck so troublesome as self.

There is no object so large but that at a great distance from the eye it does not appear smaller than a smaller object near.

I don’t think President Trump is a racist.

There will always be something to ruin our lives, it all depends on what or which finds us first. We are always ripe and ready to be taken.

Freedom is relative.

If you would judge, understand.

When you are an actor, you have to stay inside this world, but when you are with the crew, on the outside, you are in the dirt, working through all the issues. It’s just a different way of working, and I think I preferred it.

Faith indeed tells what the senses do not tell, but not the contrary of what they see. It is above them and not contrary to them.

I have been ever of opinion that revolutions are not to be evaded.

Anyone who keeps the ability to see beauty never grows old.

This has been my life for many years; one role feeds the other.

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 still make sure to go, at least once every year, to a country where things cannot be taken for granted, and where there is either too much law and order or too little.

Life is a song to me.

I mean, I feel like you get more bees with honey. But that doesn’t mean I don’t get frustrated in my life.

Our scientific power has outrun our spiritual power. We have guided missiles and misguided men.

Those who forget good and evil and seek only to know the facts are more likely to achieve good than those who view the world through the distorting medium of their own desires.

The assumption is that your personal life has to be a mess to create, but how much chaos can you allow in before it takes over?

What’s real freedom? Real freedom is being able to not have my way and still be just as happy as if I did.