Talk to a man about himself and he will listen for hours.

I write all my sermons.

People should make up their own mind about what they think of me.

I don’t dabble and spend much mind or time dealing with, I don’t know, people’s perceptions of me. I truly don’t.

Even with all the advantages of retrospect, and a lot of witnesses dead and gone, you can’t make your life look as if you intended it or you were consistent. All you can show is how you dealt with various hands.

We are eager to tunnel under the Atlantic and bring the Old World some weeks nearer to the New, but perchance the first news that will leak through into the broad, flapping American ear will be that the Princess Adelaide has the whooping cough.

Pressed into service means pressed out of shape.

When you are offended at any man’s fault, turn to yourself and study your own failings. Then you will forget your anger.

You must live for another if you wish to live for yourself.

Just because I managed to do a little something, I don’t want anyone back home to think I got the big head.

A leader who confines his role to his people’s experience dooms himself to stagnation; a leader who outstrips his people’s experience runs the risk of not being understood.

What nourishes me also destroys me.

To be honest with you, when I got into this I never thought about reviews. I never thought about what people would say about me. I was just a young guy who was excited to become a comedian and an actor and I just wanted to get to do what I got to do.

Questioning my spiritual life has always been germane to what I was writing. Always. It’s because I’m not quite an atheist and it worries me. There’s that little bit that holds on: ‚Well, I’m almost an atheist. Give me a couple of months.‘

I don’t write so much now. I’m getting on 33, pot belly and creeping dementia.

It’s presumptuous to say you know how somebody feels.

There are very few people who really appreciate my shows. People come to the show and they pay and they enjoy it, but I don’t really think most people really understand what they’ve seen.

I just really believe people have to get hungry. I think maybe what we need to do, instead of trying to stuff our beliefs down people’s throats, is just pray for them to really be hungry and to see their neediness.

I don’t know what’s the matter with people: they don’t learn by understanding; they learn by some other way – by rote, or something. Their knowledge is so fragile!

An individual has not started living until he can rise above the narrow confines of his individualistic concerns to the broader concerns of all humanity.

In a controversy the instant we feel anger we have already ceased striving for the truth, and have begun striving for ourselves.

Whenever you are angry, be assured that it is not only a present evil, but that you have increased a habit.

As the biggest library if it is in disorder is not as useful as a small but well-arranged one, so you may accumulate a vast amount of knowledge but it will be of far less value than a much smaller amount if you have not thought it over for yourself.

We can learn to see each other and see ourselves in each other and recognize that human beings are more alike than we are unalike.

Know thyself? If I knew myself I would run away.

Be nice to the whites, they need you to rediscover their humanity.

What I have never been afraid of is to be a little silly, and you can engage people that way. My view is, first you get them to laugh, then you get them to listen.

I don’t look at my old work. I mean, they made nice books; the books were made without me, the one from last year and the one from this year. I – personally, I’m not interested in my own past. I’m only interested in today – perhaps tomorrow.

A man will speedily sit down and sympathize with a friend’s griefs, but if he sees him honored and esteemed, he is apt to regard him as a rival and does not so readily rejoice with him. This ought not to be; without effort, we ought to be happy in our brother’s happiness.

We are in a far better position to observe instincts in animals or in primitives than in ourselves. This is due to the fact that we have grown accustomed to scrutinizing our own actions and to seeking rational explanations for them.

People who do not know how to laugh are always pompous and self-conceited.

Every day we should hear at least one little song, read one good poem, see one exquisite picture, and, if possible, speak a few sensible words.

Pretension is a poor joke that you play on yourself. Snap out of it. Recognise your strengths, work on your weaknesses. Real achievement is liking what you see in the mirror every morning.

If man made himself the first object of study, he would see how incapable he is of going further. How can a part know the whole?

Sincere words are not fine; fine words are not sincere.

Use what language you will, you can never say anything but what you are.

I admire people who dare to take the language, English, and understand it and understand the melody.

Nothing is at last sacred but the integrity of your own mind.

Mastery passes often for egotism.

Nothing is more difficult, and therefore more precious, than to be able to decide.

Maybe ‚loner‘ is too strong a word, but I’ve always enjoyed being on my own.

I want everybody to understand that I am an American Negro first before I am a member of any political party.

We judge people in areas where we’re vulnerable to shame, especially picking folks who are doing worse than we’re doing.

‚Suffering should not make us bitter people,‘ my mother once said, ‚it should make us better comforters.‘ Young people need to hear this from those who have walked before them, because someday they’ll be walking those same steps, but there may not be anyone following behind.

We must, all of us, learn actually not to have enemies, but only confused adversaries who are ourselves in disguise.

People gonna be they own individuals and have they own worlds and I can’t knock it.

If someone decides they’re not going to be happy, it’s not your problem. You don’t have to spend your time and energy trying to cheer up someone who has already decided to stay in a bad mood. Believe it or not, you can actually hurt people by playing into their self-pity.

What makes you a SEAL, what makes you a SEAL is being a good tactician on the battle field, understanding how to shoot, move, and communicate, knowing small unit maneuver warfare. That’s what makes a good SEAL, and so that is the course of instruction that I taught, was getting SEAL platoons ready for deployments to Iraq and Afghanistan.

Remember, we are not human beings having a spiritual experience. We are spiritual beings having a human experience.

I do not have much patience with a thing of beauty that must be explained to be understood. If it does need additional interpretation by someone other than the creator, then I question whether it has fulfilled its purpose.

One can not reflect in streaming water. Only those who know internal peace can give it to others.

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.

Songs for me are like a message in a bottle. You send them out to the world, and maybe the person who you feel that way about will hear about it someday.

You have to understand that people that are hurting are going to criticize.

If you only believe that you’re an artist when you have a big advance in your pocket and a single coming out, I would say that’s quite soulless. You have to have a sense of your own greatness and your own ability from a very deep place inside you. I am the one with the litmus test in my hands of what people need to hear next.

Our prime purpose in this life is to help others. And if you can’t help them, at least don’t hurt them.

Weak character will neutralize all of the other possible good qualities a person might possess.

The hippie movement politicized my generation. When it ended, we all started looking back at our own history, looking, in my case, for motives of rebellion.

To know anything well involves a profound sensation of ignorance.

I am trying to find myself. Sometimes that’s not easy.

For people who may think they know, or have snippets of who I am, you can attack that person. That’s part of being a public figure.