Optimism means better than reality; pessimism means worse than reality. I’m a realist.

How sweet is the perception of a new natural fact!

Laughter is not at all a bad beginning for a friendship, and it is far the best ending for one.

There’s no reality except the one contained within us. That’s why so many people live an unreal life. They take images outside them for reality and never allow the world within them to assert itself.

The Public is merely a multiplied ‚me.‘

We all live with the objective of being happy; our lives are all different and yet the same.

You might not always get what you want, but you always get what you expect.

Every day is a gift from God. There’s no guarantee of tomorrow, so that tells me to see the good in this day to make the most of it.

Put your hand on a hot stove for a minute and it seems like an hour. Sit with a pretty girl for an hour, and it seems like a minute.

What you are comes to you.

We cannot direct the wind, but we can adjust the sails.

When I think over what I have said, I envy dumb people.

No object is so beautiful that, under certain conditions, it will not look ugly.

The happiness of this life depends less on what befalls you than the way in which you take it.

I don’t think of all the misery but of the beauty that still remains.

In the business world, the rearview mirror is always clearer than the windshield.

People in tough times – it doesn’t mean they don’t have a great attitude.

You want to do good things, and once you’ve done a couple of good things in a row, you think ‚Well gee, let’s not mess this up.‘ But I am lucky at this point that I have something I really love to do, and it completely holds my attention. I never feel frustrated by it.

It’s important for me to let my fans know I really don’t care. I’m confident.

He who is contented is rich.

Character is like a tree and reputation like a shadow. The shadow is what we think of it; the tree is the real thing.

When I left Dortmund, I said it’s not important what people think when you come in but what they think when you leave.

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

Everybody believes in something and everybody, by virtue of the fact that they believe in something, uses that something to support their own existence.

The battle is all over except the ‚shouting‘ when one knows what is wanted and has made up his mind to get it, whatever the price may be.

I prefer to praise people and the world rather than criticize them and it.

September 11 shocked many Americans into an awareness that they had better pay much closer attention to what the U.S. government does in the world and how it is perceived. Many issues have been opened for discussion that were not on the agenda before. That’s all to the good.

I’m reasonably optimistic about the future, especially the future of the United States – for the century, at least.

Lenience will operate with greater force, in some instances than rigor. It is therefore my first wish to have all of my conduct distinguished by it.

I think I have the nicest fans in the world, and I quite like being surrounded by people if we’re all feeling the same emotion in the same room.

A day without laughter is a day wasted.

I think, in politics, half the people are gonna like you, and half the people are not gonna like you, no matter what you do or what you say… It’s like there are no right answers. If there were, everyone would choose the right answers. They’re all opinions.

But O, how bitter a thing it is to look into happiness through another man’s eyes.

Men can only be happy when they do not assume that the object of life is happiness.

Watch out for the joy-stealers: gossip, criticism, complaining, faultfinding, and a negative, judgmental attitude.

I believe if you keep your faith, you keep your trust, you keep the right attitude, if you’re grateful, you’ll see God open up new doors.

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

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

The long time to come when I shall not exist has more effect on me than this short present time, which nevertheless seems endless.

There are very few people who really appreciate my shows. People come to the show and they pay and they enjoy it, but I don’t really think most people really understand what they’ve seen.

Sometimes I wonder if I’m as famous for my wheelchair and disabilities as I am for my discoveries.

Inside every cynical person, there is a disappointed idealist.

Seeing is not always believing.

The secret to success is to offend the greatest number of people.

For everything you have missed, you have gained something else, and for everything you gain, you lose something else.

The only thing worse than being blind is having sight but no vision.

You can change your world by changing your words… Remember, death and life are in the power of the tongue.

Every day is a gift from God, no matter how old we are.

It’s different from being 21 and you think there’s endless amount of opportunities. At 33, the ending is much, much closer.

I’m like a recovering perfectionist. For me it’s one day at a time.

The vulgar man is always the most distinguished, for the very desire to be distinguished is vulgar.

Education is not a problem. Education is an opportunity.

If a man loses his reverence for any part of life, he will lose his reverence for all of life.

I’ll tell you one thing, since I’m married, single people look absolutely ridiculous to me.

Life consists in what a man is thinking of all day.

As pessimistic as I am about the nature of human beings and our capacity for atrocity and malevolence and betrayal and laziness and inertia, and all those things, I think we can transcend all that and set things straight.

I just want you to know that, when we talk about war, we’re really talking about peace.

Reading is equivalent to thinking with someone else’s head instead of with one’s own.

Love is the delusion that one woman differs from another.

Fame doesn’t fulfill you. It warms you a bit, but that warmth is temporary.

I think what motivates people is not great hate, but great love for other people.