Sometimes we look back and 10 years from now we think, ‚Boy, those were great old days.‘ Well, you know, we’re living in the good old days.

Our greatness has always come from people who expect nothing and take nothing for granted – folks who work hard for what they have, then reach back and help others after them.

Oh, hour of forgiven sin, moment of perfect pardon, our soul shall never forget you while, within you, life and being find immortality!

We have one planet in our solar system that’s habitable, and that’s the Earth, and space travel can transform things back here for the better. First of all, by just having people go to space and look back on this fragile planet we live on. People have come back transformed and have done fantastic things.

I do not know what I may appear to the world; but to myself, I seem to have been only like a boy playing on the seashore, and diverting myself now and then in finding a smoother pebble or prettier shell than ordinary, while the great ocean of truth lay all undiscovered before me.

Going home helps the content.

There are two ways to live: you can live as if nothing is a miracle; you can live as if everything is a miracle.

The truth. It is a beautiful and terrible thing, and must therefore be treated with great caution.

My mother never cursed at home; my father never cursed at home. My father didn’t drink. Even though we were poor, we would say a blessing over the table. So that’s who I am.

Being ‚contented‘ ought to mean in English, as it does in French, being pleased. Being content with an attic ought not to mean being unable to move from it and resigned to living in it; it ought to mean appreciating all there is in such a position.

Look folks, we know who built this country and we know who is going to rebuild it. It’s you. Instead of vilifying you, we should be thanking you. We owe you.

Do everything as in the eye of another.

I am not a self-help writer. I am a self-problem writer. When people read my books, I provoke some things. I cannot justify my work. I do my work; it is up to them to classify it, to judge.

The end of man is action, and not thought, though it be of the noblest.

In my heart, I’m just a kid from the council houses. I can remember the old cottage and my dad coming round with the tin bath. I’m not a rich man.

Who is the most sensible person? The one who finds what is to their own advantage in all that happens to them.

There was never yet fair woman but she made mouths in a glass.

Doo-wop is special music to me because it’s so straightforward and melody-driven and captures emotions.

To live is so startling it leaves little time for anything else.

Whenever people agree with me I always feel I must be wrong.

In order to understand the world, one has to turn away from it on occasion.

People who make history know nothing about history. You can see that in the sort of history they make.

The debt we owe to the play of imagination is incalculable.

As human beings, we are all not conducting just one narrative but many narratives all at the same time.

It is easy to say how we love new friends, and what we think of them, but words can never trace out all the fibers that knit us to the old.

Many a man thinks he is buying pleasure, when he is really selling himself to it.

I grew up in a very nice house in Houston, went to private school all my life and I’ve never even been to the ‚hood. Not that there’s anything wrong with the ‚hood.

Truths and roses have thorns about them.

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

It may be, it just may be, that life as we know it with its humanity is more unique than many have thought.

The more you stay in this kind of job, the more you realize that a public figure, a major public figure, is a lonely man.

I think we have to own the fears that we have of each other, and then, in some practical way, some daily way, figure out how to see people differently than the way we were brought up to.

Occasionally, I hanker for the time when I sold more records, but I don’t sit and drool about it. When I do look at early footage of Talking Heads, I realise I was just a wreck.

I would never die for my beliefs because I might be wrong.

We grow older, but we do not change. We become more sophisticated, but at bottom we continue to resemble our young selves, eager to listen to the next story and the next, and the next.

There are many victories worse than a defeat.

He who can no longer pause to wonder and stand rapt in awe, is as good as dead; his eyes are closed.

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

I’ve always loved black culture; I don’t know any other way to put it. Since I was a kid I loved music and early jazz, Sly and the Family Stone. I’m older – I’m in my early 50s – so you’ll have to excuse me. That was always very exciting to me to connect to the culture on that level.

The supreme function of reason is to show man that some things are beyond reason.

Everything I have, my career, my success, my family, I owe to America.

I long for the time when all human history is taught as one history, because it really is.

If you give, you will be blessed.

To some extent I liken slavery to death.

Friendship, like credit, is highest when it is not used.

For most of us, wisdom is acquired in the thicket of experience and usually meets us somewhere along the way if we live long enough. But sooner is better than later.

What is this world that is hastening me toward I know not what, viewing me with contempt?

I never think of the future – it comes soon enough.

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

Is the babe young? When I behold it, it seems more venerable than the oldest man.

In the course of history, men come to see that iron necessity is neither iron nor necessary.

All that I am, or hope to be, I owe to my angel mother.

That’s the shock: All cliches are true. The years really do speed by. Life really is as short as they tell you it is. And there really is a God – so do I buy that one? If all the other cliches are true… Hell, don’t pose me that one.

Comfort and prosperity have never enriched the world as much as adversity has.

Faith indeed tells what the senses do not tell, but not the contrary of what they see. It is above them and not contrary to them.

In a certain sense the Good is comfortless.

Happiness is within the reach of everyone, rich or poor. Yet comparatively few people are happy. I believe the reason for this is that the majority don’t recognize happiness even when it is within their grasp.

The ideal death, I think, is what was the ideal Victorian death, you know, with your grandchildren around you, a bit of sobbing. And you say goodbye to your loved ones, making certain that one of them has been left behind to look after the shop.

An enemy generally says and believes what he wishes.

Every time I come to Europe, I’m just as excited as I was my very first time, which was many, many years ago. I love that part of the world, and I especially love the fans.

What is important in life is life, and not the result of life.