Reality simply consists of different points of view.

Life is so, so short. Bible says it’s like a vapor.

Depend upon it that if a man talks of his misfortunes there is something in them that is not disagreeable to him; for where there is nothing but pure misery there never is any recourse to the mention of it.

Words are more powerful than some noises. Noises won’t last long. Lyrics are so important, and people don’t realise that.

Life is not a series of gig lamps symmetrically arranged; life is a luminous halo, a semi-transparent envelope surrounding us from the beginning of consciousness to the end.

Physical comforts cannot subdue mental suffering, and if we look closely, we can see that those who have many possessions are not necessarily happy. In fact, being wealthy often brings even more anxiety.

The higher a man stands, the more the word vulgar becomes unintelligible to him.

What if nothing exists and we’re all in somebody’s dream?

Whatever deceives men seems to produce a magical enchantment.

As a musician and a songwriter, it is an act of the ego to believe that other people might be interested in your point of view. But it is usually an empathetic nature that gets you going in the first place.

For me, money is not my definition of success. Inspiring people is a definition of success.

Each generation imagines itself to be more intelligent than the one that went before it, and wiser than the one that comes after it.

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

For as the eyes of bats are to the blaze of day, so is the reason in our soul to the things which are by nature most evident of all.

The true history of my administration will be written 50 years from now, and you and I will not be around to see it.

For my part, I consider that it will be found much better by all parties to leave the past to history, especially as I propose to write that history myself.

The hidden harmony is better than the obvious.

I get to hear the really good or the really bad things in the press, but I don’t read it. I can afford to say that because public opinion does not drive U2’s audience.

It’s only I have seen enough of it and the funny thing is now, I know that I’m skinny, because I know there are even smaller clothes in the store. I think I’m big, when I was big, I never thought about it.

Only kings, presidents, editors, and people with tapeworms have the right to use the editorial ‚we.‘

Mendacity is a system that we live in. Liquor is one way out an death’s the other.

If people think nature is their friend, then they sure don’t need an enemy.

I like the dreams of the future better than the history of the past.

The minority is sometimes right; the majority always wrong.

It is far harder to kill a phantom than a reality.

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

In too many communities, too many young men of color are left behind and seen only as objects of fear. Through initiatives like My Brother’s Keeper, I’m personally committed to changing both perception and reality.

We usually lose today, because there has been a yesterday, and tomorrow is coming.

There is always something infinitely mean about other people’s tragedies.

When I was 18, I thought that, to be a romantic, you couldn’t live past 30.

An example I often use to illustrate the reality of vanity, is this: look at the peacock; it’s beautiful if you look at it from the front. But if you look at it from behind, you discover the truth… Whoever gives in to such self-absorbed vanity has huge misery hiding inside them.

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

The farther backward you can look, the farther forward you can see.

There are definitely elements of experience and stuff that someone who’s my age wouldn’t have. But there are also things that I can do that other people wouldn’t necessarily be able to.

It’s very difficult for the American people to believe that our government, one of the richest on Earth, is also one of the stingiest on Earth.

To me a lush carpet of pine needles or spongy grass is more welcome than the most luxurious Persian rug.

If somebody thinks they’re a hedgehog, presumably you just give ‚em a mirror and a few pictures of hedgehogs and tell them to sort it out for themselves.

I’m sorry, it’s true. Having children really changes your view on these things. We’re born, we live for a brief instant, and we die. It’s been happening for a long time. Technology is not changing it much – if at all.

Too many of us look upon Americans as dollar chasers. This is a cruel libel, even if it is reiterated thoughtlessly by the Americans themselves.

The common question that gets asked in business is, ‚why?‘ That’s a good question, but an equally valid question is, ‚why not?‘

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.

The wise are wise only because they love. The fool are fools only because they think they can understand love.

Your living is determined not so much by what life brings to you as by the attitude you bring to life; not so much by what happens to you as by the way your mind looks at what happens.

There are no such things as Flowers there are only gladdened Leaves.

The pendulum of the mind alternates between sense and nonsense, not between right and wrong.

I define nothing. Not beauty, not patriotism. I take each thing as it is, without prior rules about what it should be.

Death is not the worst that can happen to men.

I have found out in later years that we were very poor, but the glory of America is that we didn’t know it then.

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

All thought must, directly or indirectly, by way of certain characters, relate ultimately to intuitions, and therefore, with us, to sensibility, because in no other way can an object be given to us.

Nobody is as powerful as we make them out to be.

Death is no more than passing from one room into another. But there’s a difference for me, you know. Because in that other room I shall be able to see.

So many people are looking at what’s wrong, and I try to encourage them to look at what’s right in their life. A lot of people have it a lot worse than you do.

The use of travelling is to regulate imagination by reality, and instead of thinking how things may be, to see them as they are.

All that we call ideal in Greek or any other art, because to us it is false and visionary, was, to the makers of it, true and existent.

How do you know what it’s like to be stupid if you’ve never been smart?

I don’t concern myself with award. I’d been to the party enough times to know it really didn’t matter.

The chief value of money lies in the fact that one lives in a world in which it is overestimated.

There are only two kinds of men: the righteous who think they are sinners and the sinners who think they are righteous.

No story is the same to us after a lapse of time; or rather we who read it are no longer the same interpreters.

Get your facts first, then you can distort them as you please.