People make jokes about my bosoms, why don’t they look underneath the breasts at the heart? It’s obvious I’ve got big ones and if people want to assume they’re not mine, then let them.

One must verify or expel his doubts, and convert them into the certainty of Yes or NO.

When I was married, I definitely went through a lying period.

Do the thing we fear, and death of fear is certain.

I never took a day off in my twenties. Not one. And I’m still fanatical, but now I’m a little less fanatical.

In all my work, in the movies I write, the lyrics, the poetry, the prose, the essays, I am saying that we may encounter many defeats – maybe it’s imperative that we encounter the defeats – but we are much stronger than we appear to be and maybe much better than we allow ourselves to be. Human beings are more alike than unalike.

I vividly remember a conversation I had many years ago in 1974, which marked a turning point in my leadership journey. I was sitting at a Holiday Inn with my friend, Kurt Campmeyer, when he asked me if I had a personal growth plan. I didn’t. In fact, I didn’t even know you were supposed to have one.

I am not interested in picking up crumbs of compassion thrown from the table of someone who considers himself my master. I want the full menu of rights.

A lot of people have said I’d have probably done better in my career if I hadn’t looked so cheap and gaudy. But I dress to be comfortable for me, and you shouldn’t be blamed because you want to look pretty.

People suffer because they are caught in their views. As soon as we release those views, we are free and we don’t suffer anymore.

It is never too late to be what you might have been.

Freedom from effort in the present merely means that there has been effort stored up in the past.

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

What lies behind you and what lies in front of you, pales in comparison to what lies inside of you.

I write songs about stuff that I can’t really get past personally – and then I write a song about it and I feel better.

Every time somebody speaks of my honesty, there is someone who quivers inside me.

When I understand myself, I understand you, and out of that understanding comes love.

There is no unique picture of reality.

You can bear your own faults, and why not a fault in your wife?

You will find as you grow older that courage is the rarest of all qualities to be found in public life.

At 50, I began to know who I was. It was like waking up to myself.

I want you to panic. I want you to feel the fear I feel every day. And then I want you to act.

I have an expression I use as I’ve gone around the world through my career: ‚You never tell another man or woman what’s in their interest. They know their interest better than you know their interest.‘

There is but an inch of difference between a cushioned chamber and a padded cell.

When you are content to be simply yourself and don’t compare or compete, everybody will respect you.

I was ill, and everyone could see it but me.

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

Books can only reveal us to ourselves, and as often as they do us this service we lay them aside.

If you dream the proper dreams, and share the myths with people, they will want to grow up to be like you.

It is only a man’s own fundamental thoughts that have truth and life in them. For it is these that he really and completely understands. To read the thoughts of others is like taking the remains of someone else’s meal, like putting on the discarded clothes of a stranger.

Everything is an open book. I don’t speak on other people’s hardship, but if it happened in my life or something that has been an experience on my particular journey, I’m going to talk about it. That’s what my fan base appreciates the most. I’m universal. You can relate to the things I say or that I go through.

They say that God is everywhere, and yet we always think of Him as somewhat of a recluse.

To live alone is the fate of all great souls.

Knowing your own darkness is the best method for dealing with the darknesses of other people.

I believe that if you show people the problems and you show them the solutions they will be moved to act.

Trials teach us what we are; they dig up the soil, and let us see what we are made of.

Why does the eye see a thing more clearly in dreams than the imagination when awake?

Growing up, I decided, a long time ago, I wouldn’t accept any manmade differences between human beings, differences made at somebody else’s insistence or someone else’s whim or convenience.

I think that I am better than the people who are trying to reform me.

Heathenism is a state of mind. You can take it that I’m referring to one who does not see his world. He has no mental light. He destroys almost unwittingly. He cannot feel any Gods presence in his life. He is the 21st century man.

Love always ends differently and it always begins differently – especially with me.

There is no person so severely punished, as those who subject themselves to the whip of their own remorse.

Most of us are raised to believe we are ordinary. The anchor of the universe is present in every child. A parent only needs to guide and step aside and let them fulfill their dharma. Help children remember that they can do or be anything.

If women were particular about men’s characters, they would never get married at all.

Mine is better than ours.

Personally I’m always ready to learn, although I do not always like being taught.

Be above it! Make the world serve your purpose, but do not serve it.

What I can say is that all my characters are searching for their souls, because they are my mirrors. I’m someone who is constantly trying to understand my place in the world, and literature is the best way that I found in order to see myself.

I don’t make jokes. I just watch the government and report the facts.

I think I’ve developed, as many people do, this sense of, ‚Don’t say the wrong thing, or else people will point at you and laugh.‘

Custom reconciles us to everything.

The curse of me and my nation is that we always think things can be bettered by immediate action of some sort, any sort rather than no sort.

The bird is powered by its own life and by its motivation.

Every woman is supposed to have the same set of motives, or else to be a monster.

One mustn’t close one’s eyes to difficulty and to shortcomings; the more one recognizes them, the less they upset one.

The first of April is the day we remember what we are the other 364 days of the year.

Comedians are sociologists. We’re pointing out stuff that the general public doesn’t even stop to think about, looking at life in slow-motion and questioning everything we see.

There are other measures of self-respect for a man, than the number of clean shirts he puts on every day.

Success is like reaching an important birthday and finding you’re exactly the same.

Transforming yourself into a deep listener will not only prove more amusing as you open your mind to their mind, but you will gain the most invaluable lessons about human psychology.

If you want to lift yourself up, lift up someone else.