Prejudice is a chain, it can hold you. If you prejudice, you can’t move, you keep prejudice for years. Never get nowhere with that.

A noble man compares and estimates himself by an idea which is higher than himself; and a mean man, by one lower than himself. The one produces aspiration; the other ambition, which is the way in which a vulgar man aspires.

This has always been my life and no one else’s, and that’s how it’s always been since the day I came in it.

I admire people who destroy themselves.

Control your own destiny! Control your own destiny!

The discovery of truth is prevented more effectively, not by the false appearance things present and which mislead into error, not directly by weakness of the reasoning powers, but by preconceived opinion, by prejudice.

The great secret of success is to go through life as a man who never gets used up.

Really, the only thing that makes sense is to strive for greater collective enlightenment.

Life is a series of experiences, each one of which makes us bigger, even though sometimes it is hard to realize this. For the world was built to develop character, and we must learn that the setbacks and grieves which we endure help us in our marching onward.

If you were to ask me what I want to do – I don’t want to be a celebrity, I want to make a difference.

When you get to a place where you understand that love and belonging, your worthiness, is a birthright and not something you have to earn, anything is possible.

I think that we have opportunities all around us – sometimes we just don’t recognize them.

I have spent many years of my life in opposition, and I rather like the role.

It is our duty as men and women to proceed as though the limits of our abilities do not exist.

Every single one of us has a few months here or there that feel like dark months.

Remind yourself that winning an argument or proving your point really gets you nowhere in the long run. Win through your actions, not your words.

Narrow your life down to this moment. Your life situation may be full of problems – most life situations are – but find out if you have a problem at this moment. Do you have a problem now?

They would not find me changed from him they knew – only more sure of all I thought was true.

I don’t have much positive to say about motor neuron disease, but it taught me not to pity myself because others were worse off, and to get on with what I still could do. I’m happier now than before I developed the condition.

There are two ways of being happy: We must either diminish our wants or augment our means – either may do – the result is the same and it is for each man to decide for himself and to do that which happens to be easier.

I never come back home with the same moral character I went out with; something or other becomes unsettled where I had achieved internal peace; some one or other of the things I had put to flight reappears on the scene.

Take the complications, rules, shoulds, musts, have tos, and so on out of your life. By uncomplicating your life and removing the trivial pursuits that occupy so much of it, you open a channel for the genius within you to emerge.

The more I grow in popularity, the lonelier it gets. Because you don’t really know me. You just know this part of me. You fell in love with that. But it’s way more intricate than what meets the surface.

I’ve never been pregnant, so I just feel God didn’t mean for me to have kids so that everybody else’s children could be mine.

I think I’ve got wiser.

I’m very aware and very conscious of the path I chose in life, and very aware of the path I didn’t choose.

Every man in his lifetime needs to thank his faults.

I never do anything that I don’t want to do.

It is always your next move.

You can hold yourself back from the sufferings of the world, that is something you are free to do and it accords with your nature, but perhaps this very holding back is the one suffering you could avoid.

The superior man thinks always of virtue; the common man thinks of comfort.

I was never particularly fond of my voice.

I’ve been searching for ways to heal myself, and I’ve found that kindness is the best way.

When we tackle obstacles, we find hidden reserves of courage and resilience we did not know we had. And it is only when we are faced with failure do we realise that these resources were always there within us. We only need to find them and move on with our lives.

My father probably thought the capital of the world was wherever he was at the time. It couldn’t possibly be anyplace else. Where he and his wife were in their own home, that, for them, was the capital of the world.

We continue to shape our personality all our life. If we knew ourselves perfectly, we should die.

I’ve been reckless, but I’m not a rebel without a cause.

So then, the relationship of self to other is the complete realization that loving yourself is impossible without loving everything defined as other than yourself.

You have brains in your head. You have feet in your shoes. You can steer yourself in any direction you choose. You’re on your own, and you know what you know. And you are the guy who’ll decide where to go.

It were a real increase of human happiness, could all young men from the age of nineteen be covered under barrels, or rendered otherwise invisible; and there left to follow their lawful studies and callings, till they emerged, sadder and wiser, at the age of twenty-five.

The mind of a 19-year-old is very different from the mind of a 26-year-old. You grow. You get into better relationships. You experience more, meet more people, better people. But when you’re in a dark hole at an earlier point in your life – you write about the mindset you’re in at that moment.

I just want to be myself.

I’m reflective only in the sense that I learn to move forward. I reflect with a purpose.

Feels good to try, but playing a father, I’m getting a little older. I see now that I’m taking it more serious and I do want that lifestyle.

I’ve always believed in God. I also think that’s the sort of thing that either comes as part of the equipment, the capacity to believe, or at some point in your life, when you’re in a position where you actually need help from a power greater than yourself, you simply make an agreement.

I realized the other day that I’ve lived in New York longer than I’ve lived anywhere else. It’s amazing: I am a New Yorker. It’s strange; I never thought I would be.

The man of knowledge must be able not only to love his enemies but also to hate his friends.

I’m aware that, whatever the circumstances, there will always be speculation about me.

The greatest of faults, I should say, is to be conscious of none.

I think I have always had a little humor.

Some like to think that a keen appreciation of art can actually make us better people – more just, more moral, more sensitive, more understanding. Perhaps that is true – in certain rare, isolated cases.

We’ve been programmed, from the time that we were very, very little, about what we can’t do – about what is impossible.

Success is to be measured not so much by the position that one has reached in life as by the obstacles which he has overcome.

My life is my message.

If I wouldn’t have found Courtney, I probably would have carried on with a bisexual lifestyle.

I always try to do as much as I can do. I’m never a person that does not enough, because I’d regret not doing enough and think I probably could have done more. I probably go too far and have to reel myself back in, which works in some things, and other things it doesn’t work.

Nobody can bring you peace but yourself.

Not being afraid to be wrong – I had to learn how to do that.

Imagine your family finally making it from nothing to something, and finally getting things going, and finally buying a beautiful house and taking care of your children – and the next day, it’s completely all gone. Zero. Boom. Flat broke. So that’s when I had to man up.

Character isn’t something you were born with and can’t change, like your fingerprints. It’s something you weren’t born with and must take responsibility for forming.

There is nothing more dangerous than the conscience of a bigot.