Temptation is just the feeling that you’re the most independent person on planet Earth. That you know everything. That’s something that we all go through as a kid. Now, this lifestyle that I’m in, the same thing exists! But it’s 10 times worse, because everything is at my disposal. When you’re in the limelight, you can get anything you want.

People take different roads seeking fulfillment and happiness. Just because they’re not on your road doesn’t mean they’ve gotten lost.

I’m strictly for Stevenson. I don’t dig the intellectual bit, but I’m telling you, man, he knows the most.

A man only learns in two ways, one by reading, and the other by association with smarter people.

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.

As soon as you set foot on a yacht you belong to some man, not to yourself, and you die of boredom.

We have to abandon the idea that schooling is something restricted to youth. How can it be, in a world where half the things a man knows at 20 are no longer true at 40 – and half the things he knows at 40 hadn’t been discovered when he was 20?

Thoughts without content are empty, intuitions without concepts are blind.

No one undertakes research in physics with the intention of winning a prize. It is the joy of discovering something no one knew before.

It is wonderful to have someone praise you, to be desired.

Many admire, few know.

Omnipotence is not knowing how everything is done; it’s just doing it.

Without words, without writing and without books there would be no history, there could be no concept of humanity.

I was brought up differently than the average American child because the average child is brought up expecting to be happy.

If you want to cut your own throat, don’t come to me for a bandage.

It was a strike against me that I didn’t wear baggy jeans and jerseys and that I never hustled, never sold drugs.

The one exclusive sign of thorough knowledge is the power of teaching.

No man should escape our universities without knowing how little he knows.

You don’t have to burn books to destroy a culture. Just get people to stop reading them.

There is nothing so stupid as the educated man if you get him off the thing he was educated in.

No one tells me what to do with my music. Real. My mom doesn’t tell what to say, how is someone else going to?

And when I was young, my family was perfectly nice. I write a lot about it, as you noticed. But it was rather limited. I think, I don’t think anyone in my family would really feel I’d done them an injustice by saying that. We didn’t see many people. There were many books. It was as if I wanted to get away from home.

Knowledge which is divorced from justice, may be called cunning rather than wisdom.

The alchemists in their search for gold discovered many other things of greater value.

Without a sense of urgency, desire loses its value.

I have a brother and sister; my mother does not care for thought, and father, too busy with his briefs to notice what we do. He buys me many books, but begs me not to read them, because he fears they joggle the mind.

The only real security that a man can have in this world is a reserve of knowledge, experience and ability.

It is only when we forget all our learning that we begin to know.

Whenever something went wrong when I was young – if I had a pimple or if my hair broke – my mom would say, ‚Sister mine, I’m going to make you some soup.‘ And I really thought the soup would make my pimple go away or my hair stronger.

To be ignorant of what occurred before you were born is to remain always a child.

I found it hard to be young. When I was married in my twenties, I hated being regarded as ‚the little wife.‘ You don’t know what it was like then! I’d never even written a cheque. I had to ask my husband for money for groceries.

When I was a boy we didn’t wake up with Vietnam and have Cyprus for lunch and the Congo for dinner.

As a kid, I’d go into the bathroom when I was having a tantrum. I’d be in the bathroom crying, studying myself in the mirror. I was preparing for future roles.

I don’t know what your destiny will be, but one thing I know: the only ones among you who will be really happy are those who will have sought and found how to serve.

Bravery never goes out of fashion.

They know enough who know how to learn.

The learned is happy, nature to explore; The fool is happy, that he knows no more.

For me, it’s enough that I have the first and last word.

It is paradoxical, yet true, to say, that the more we know, the more ignorant we become in the absolute sense, for it is only through enlightenment that we become conscious of our limitations. Precisely one of the most gratifying results of intellectual evolution is the continuous opening up of new and greater prospects.

The glamour of it all! New York! America!

When I was 5, some financial things happened, and I moved seven times in a year. We moved from apartment to apartment, sometimes living with friends. My mom would always say, ‚Don’t get comfortable, because we may not be here long.‘

Early on, I was so impressed with Charles Dickens. I grew up in the South, in a little village in Arkansas, and the whites in my town were really mean, and rude. Dickens, I could tell, wouldn’t be a man who would curse me out and talk to me rudely.

I own my own company, so I’ve never had businessmen telling me what to do or getting worried if something doesn’t sell. I’ve always had my own access to the public, because I started off making my clothes for a little shop and so I’ve always had people buying them.

New knowledge is the most valuable commodity on earth. The more truth we have to work with, the richer we become.

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

‚Tis one thing to be tempted, another thing to fall.

I am not bound to please thee with my answer.

My main goal is to be a self-made man and have control over what’s mine.

Happy is he who still loves something he loved in the nursery: He has not been broken in two by time; he is not two men, but one, and he has saved not only his soul but his life.

God’s desire is that we excel.

We are not to give credit to the many, who say that none ought to be educated but the free; but rather to the philosophers, who say that the well-educated alone are free.

There was the time I bought three cars in the span of three or four weeks. It was crazy; it wasn’t greedy. It was mine, my girl’s, my mom’s. I got Benzes for my ladies. But I felt crazy. You have to understand I come from a world where we’re very modest. But that’s not greedy. That’s nice, right?

In 1949, China declared independence – an event known in Western discourse as ‚the loss of China‘ in the U.S. – with bitter recriminations and conflict over who was responsible for that loss.

‚I wish life was not so short,‘ he thought. ‚Languages take such a time, and so do all the things one wants to know about.‘

In order to arrive at knowledge of the motions of birds in the air, it is first necessary to acquire knowledge of the winds, which we will prove by the motions of water in itself, and this knowledge will be a step enabling us to arrive at the knowledge of beings that fly between the air and the wind.

For my part I know nothing with any certainty, but the sight of the stars makes me dream.

Solitude is independence.

A man who has never gone to school may steal from a freight car; but if he has a university education, he may steal the whole railroad.

Satan is the master distracter. He is always working to keep us off track in our walk with God.

I worked out a lot before I was 20. I was hard underneath. I had just a little padding. I was quilted. Always Chanel.

Our Creator expects His children everywhere to educate themselves.