People like to build their own story about my life. I don’t know if it makes them feel better, or if it makes it okay for them to not like me, but the last thing I grew up as was rich.

No one but a fool is always right.

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.

I believe God wants you to have money to pay your bills, send your kids to college and do charity work and build orphanages. There’s the teaching that we’re supposed to be poor to show that we’re humble. I don’t buy that. I think we’re supposed to be leaders. We’re supposed to excel.

I wish I knew why I am so anguished.

People take the little bit of information they’re fed, and they draw a picture of who you are. Most of the time, it’s wrong.

Genius is a potential that lives within you and every other human being. You have many moments of genius in your lifetime. These are the times when you have a uniquely brilliant idea and implement it even if only you are aware of how fantastic it is.

Even in the 1950s, President Eisenhower was concerned about what he called a campaign of hatred of the U.S. in the Arab world, because of the perception on the Arab street that it supported harsh and oppressive regimes to take their oil.

I have never felt that the one thing that I am ‚known for‘ is what I am.

I don’t pity any man who does hard work worth doing. I admire him. I pity the creature who does not work, at whichever end of the social scale he may regard himself as being.

Wealth is the ability to fully experience life.

I am sure there’s going to be times when I do things wrong that no one’s going to like and everyone’s going to think I’m terrible and rubbish but I know I’m going to go through those times, and it’s just about understanding that that’s going to happen.

Use your health, even to the point of wearing it out. That is what it is for. Spend all you have before you die; do not outlive yourself.

Many a man’s reputation would not know his character if they met on the street.

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

In Hollywood the woods are full of people that learned to write but evidently can’t read. If they could read their stuff, they’d stop writing.

You can either be a host to God, or a hostage to your ego. It’s your call.

When I was very young I was sort of floored by the fact that my mother and my father and everyone I knew was going to die one day, and myself too. I had a sort of a philosophical crisis. I couldn’t believe that we were mortal.

You need to understand what works best for your own body.

Never let your ego get so close to your position that when your position goes, your ego goes with it.

Money has a language of its own.

My age is very insignificant to me. I don’t think about it, but the world does. The world likes young people in general.

In Italy they take cheap cloth and make it look expensive, but I take expensive cloth and make it look cheap. They just don’t understand.

What lies behind us and what lies ahead of us are tiny matters compared to what lives within us.

I more fear what is within me than what comes from without.

If we were not all so interested in ourselves, life would be so uninteresting that none of us would be able to endure it.

I guess I have a little bit of an ego. I’m confidently cocky, you might say.

You might not have the things you want, but if you check carefully, you got all you need.

I am being frank about myself in this book. I tell of my first mistake on page 850.

The more you know of your history, the more liberated you are.

A fanatic is a man who consciously over compensates a secret doubt.

The man with a toothache thinks everyone happy whose teeth are sound. The poverty-stricken man makes the same mistake about the rich man.

The Christian resolution to find the world ugly and bad has made the world ugly and bad.

The big question about how people behave is whether they’ve got an Inner Scorecard or an Outer Scorecard. It helps if you can be satisfied with an Inner Scorecard.

Some people mistakenly think nature is very nice and benevolent and never betrays.

People pay for what they do, and still more for what they have allowed themselves to become. And they pay for it very simply; by the lives they lead.

It is easy to be beautiful; it is difficult to appear so.

The darkness is really out there. It’s not something that’s in my head, just. It’s in my work because it’s in the world.

What I am looking for is not out there, it is in me.

I can never say ‚why‘ about anything I do. I suppose I can say ‚how‘ and ‚when‘ and ‚what.‘ But ‚why‘ is impenetrable to me.

I put a lot of pressure on myself. I think something’s not good enough, and I won’t stop until I feel like I’ve made it. I’m never satisfied.

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

If I am walking with two other men, each of them will serve as my teacher. I will pick out the good points of the one and imitate them, and the bad points of the other and correct them in myself.

He who knows best knows how little he knows.

I never deny. I never contradict. I sometimes forget.

My number one thing? Don’t overleverage yourself. Don’t say you can do something when you really can’t.

A man may be so much of everything that he is nothing of anything.

There is only one class in the community that thinks more about money than the rich, and that is the poor. The poor can think of nothing else.

The little man is still a man.

Who is richer? The man who is seen, but cannot see? Or the man who is not being seen, but can see?

Every person takes the limits of their own field of vision for the limits of the world.

We view things not only from different sides, but with different eyes; we have no wish to find them alike.

I change my mind a lot. I usually don’t agree with what I say very much. I’m an awful liar.

The world can criticize me, but l can always criticize it back.

Wealthy men can’t live in an island that is encircled by poverty. We all breathe the same air. We must give a chance to everyone, at least a basic chance.

I do suffer from depression, I suppose. Which isn’t that unusual. You know, a lot of people do.

To meditate means to go home to yourself. Then you know how to take care of the things that are happening inside you, and you know how to take care of the things that happen around you.

Be careful to leave your sons well instructed rather than rich, for the hopes of the instructed are better than the wealth of the ignorant.

I’ve known for years that the university underserved the community, because we assumed that university education is for 18- to 22-year-olds, which is a proposition that’s so absurd it is absolutely mind-boggling that anyone ever conceptualized it. Why wouldn’t you take university courses throughout your entire life?

I have a hard time figuring out what kind of box to put me in, too, because I don’t know exactly what’s going on around me or why. But I need to stay outside of boxes because then I can look at what’s inside of them without being part of them.

I am more afraid of my own heart than of the pope and all his cardinals. I have within me the great pope, Self.