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

Everywhere I go, the kids call me ‚the book lady.‘ The older I get, the more appreciative I seem to be of the ‚book lady‘ title. It makes me feel more like a legitimate person, not just a singer or an entertainer. But it makes me feel like I’ve done something good with my life and with my success.

I would impress upon your minds the fact that if you want to do a man justice, you should believe what a man says himself rather than what people say he says.

Me, as a person, I grow. I’m like a chameleon. You know? That is a gift and a curse for me. But more so a gift, because it never puts me in a box.

My purpose is to help people look at themselves and begin to shift their concepts. Remember, we are not our country, our race, or religion. We are eternal spirits. Seeing ourselves as spiritual beings without label is a way to transform the world and reach a sacred place for all of humanity.

Judgements prevent us from seeing the good that lies beyond appearances.

In the egoic state, your sense of self, your identity, is derived from your thinking mind – in other words, what your mind tells you about yourself: the storyline of you, the memories, the expectations, all the thoughts that go through your head continuously and the emotions that reflect those thoughts. All those things make up your sense of self.

If I wasn’t Bob Dylan, I’d probably think that Bob Dylan has a lot of answers myself.

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

We shall see but a little way if we require to understand what we see.

The difference between false memories and true ones is the same as for jewels: it is always the false ones that look the most real, the most brilliant.

There is no unique picture of reality.

To be in love is merely to be in a state of perceptual anesthesia – to mistake an ordinary young woman for a goddess.

I’m a child of God first. Before I became a celebrity, I was baptized a Christian.

Nothing is so good as it seems beforehand.

Truthfully, without over-egging it, as I often do, the library and journalism, those things made me who I am.

America is not nearly done. We’re only in the beginning. Who knows who we will be? Who knows… what color we will be? It is all something that, maybe, our descendants – if they survive that long – will see.

Part of the reason for the ugliness of adults, in a child’s eyes, is that the child is usually looking upwards, and few faces are at their best when seen from below.

I long, as does every human being, to be at home wherever I find myself.

With my childhood, it’s a wonder I’m not psychotic. I was the little Jewish boy in the non-Jewish neighborhood. It was a little like being the first Negro enrolled in the all-white school. I grew up in libraries and among books, without friends.

A man may imagine things that are false, but he can only understand things that are true, for if the things be false, the apprehension of them is not understanding.

The power of accurate observation is commonly called cynicism by those who have not got it.

People tried to change my concept of what music is. That music is work, but it’s not like that.

We can have no ’50-50′ allegiance in this country. Either a man is an American and nothing else, or he is not an American at all.

One of the things that we’re trying to do with Creative Labs and all our experiences is explore things that aren’t all tied to Facebook identity. Some things will be, but not everything will have to be, because there are some sets of experiences that are just better with other identities.

The world we see that seems so insane is the result of a belief system that is not working. To perceive the world differently, we must be willing to change our belief system, let the past slip away, expand our sense of now, and dissolve the fear in our minds.

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.

Every spirit makes its house, and we can give a shrewd guess from the house to the inhabitant.

A true artist is expected to be all that is noble-minded, and this is not altogether a mistake; on the other hand, however, in what a mean way are critics allowed to pounce upon us.

I don’t notice anybody unless they look great, and every now and again they do, and they are usually 70.

Great discoveries and improvements invariably involve the cooperation of many minds. I may be given credit for having blazed the trail, but when I look at the subsequent developments I feel the credit is due to others rather than to myself.

I’d like to believe that the people that have supported me in my work or identified with me in films, the people that feel they know me, they do and they don’t have misconceptions – they understand. I believe that.

Before the effect one believes in different causes than one does after the effect.

To avoid being mistaken for a sellout, I chose my friends carefully. The more politically active black students. The foreign students. The Chicanos. The Marxist professors and structural feminists and punk-rock performance poets.

It was one of those evenings when men feel that truth, goodness and beauty are one. In the morning, when they commit their discovery to paper, when others read it written there, it looks wholly ridiculous.

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.

It is a mania shared by philosophers of all ages to deny what exists and to explain what does not exist.

A person hears only what they understand.

The moment you think you understand a great work of art, it’s dead for you.

You are the sum total of everything you’ve ever seen, heard, eaten, smelled, been told, forgot – it’s all there. Everything influences each of us, and because of that I try to make sure that my experiences are positive.

Ah! yes, I know: those who see me rarely trust my word: I must look too intelligent to keep it.

Changes are not unusual – I mean, most movies, when they release them, they make changes. But somehow, when I make the slightest change, everybody thinks it’s the end of the world.

Me don’t dip on nobody’s side. Me don’t dip on the black man’s side, not the white man’s side. Me dip on God’s side, the one who create me and cause me to come from black and white.

Everything’s fine today, that is our illusion.

All black Americans have slave names. They have white names; names that the slave master has given to them.

I don’t look at myself as a commodity, but I’m sure a lot of people have.

My affection for Taiwan… is witnessed by everyone. My wife is Taiwanese and I am a son-in-law of Taiwan. I am half Taiwanese.

For an occurrence to become an adventure, it is necessary and sufficient for one to recount it.

To see clearly is poetry, prophecy and religion all in one.

A lost battle is a battle one thinks one has lost.

Really, who you are is defined by the people who you know – not even the people that you know, but the people you spend time with and the people that you love and the people that you work with. I guess we show your friends in your profile, but that’s kind of different from the information you put in your profile.

The worst times were the years I was alone. The image to the public entering the courtroom was eight men, of a certain size, and then this little woman sitting to the side. That was not a good image for the public to see.

People see things differently and remember things differently. It’s why if somebody robs a liquor store and there are four witnesses they’ll often disagree.

I try never to wear my own clothes, I pretend I’m someone else.

I’m not one icon. I’m every icon. I’m an icon that is made out of all the colors on the palette at every time. I have no restrictions. No restrictions.

Common Sense is that which judges the things given to it by other senses.

Your life will be a blessed and balanced experience if you first honor your identity and priority.

Reality is a sliding door.

When people get taken over by the ego to such an extent, there is nothing else in their mind except the ego. They can no longer feel or sense their humanity – what they share with other human beings, or even with other life forms on the planet. They are so identified with concepts in their minds that other human beings become concepts as well.

Vanity is but the surface.

I never set out to be weird. It was always other people who called me weird.