The ego is nothing other than the focus of conscious attention.

As soon as you trust yourself, you will know how to live.

Why should we be in such desperate haste to succeed, and in such desperate enterprises? If a man does not keep pace with his companions, perhaps it is because he hears a different drummer.

The best books… are those that tell you what you know already.

It’s very hard to live with yourself if you don’t stick with your moral code.

The people who truly know me know what I’m like. There have been people who try to say things that aren’t fair, and I check them. And then they don’t like me because I checked them.

Man is but a reed, the most feeble thing in nature, but he is a thinking reed.

Two things control men’s nature, instinct and experience.

It is wise to persuade people to do things and make them think it was their own idea.

Eventually you get to this point where you understand what you want to do and get across and sound like.

Who shall measure the hat and violence of the poet’s heart when caught and tangled in a woman’s body?

Obviously everybody, if you’re playing in the league, you’ve got to have somewhat of an ego about how you play the game.

People do not seem to realize that their opinion of the world is also a confession of character.

Let each know that for each the body, the mind and the soul have been freed to fulfill themselves.

Some men have a necessity to be mean, as if they were exercising a faculty which they had to partially neglect since early childhood.

Of course, like anybody I repeat myself endlessly, but I don’t know that I’m doing it, usually.

One thing I hope I’ll never be is drunk with my own power. And anybody who says I am will never work in this town again.

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

I know where I’m going and I know the truth, and I don’t have to be what you want me to be. I’m free to be what I want.

I claim to be a simple individual liable to err like any other fellow mortal. I own, however, that I have humility enough in me to confess my errors and to retrace my steps.

Pride deafens us to the advice or warnings of those around us.

Nothing is more terrible than activity without insight.

Man can hardly even recognize the devils of his own creation.

I’m a spokesman for myself. It just so happens that there’s a bunch of people that are concerned with what I have to say. I find that frightening at times because I’m just as confused as most people. I don’t have the answers for anything.

I talk to myself all the time. Just make sure you answer.

It’s dangerous to read the Internet about yourself when you’re me. Or when you’re anyone in the public eye.

When dealing with the insane, the best method is to pretend to be sane.

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.

The real power of the Buddha was that he had so much love. He saw people trapped in their notions of small separate self, feeling guilty or proud of that self, and he offered revolutionary teachings that resounded like a lion’s roar, like a great rising tide, helping people to wake up and break free from the prison of ignorance.

There are women who can make you feel more with their bodies and their souls, but these are the exact women who will turn the knife into you right in front of the crowd. Of course, I expect this, but the knife still cuts.

You’re not going to say anything about me that I’m not going to say about myself. There’s so many things that I think about myself; if someone really wanted to get at me, they could say this and this and this. So I’m going to say it before they can. It’s the best policy for me.

The Christ-symbol is of the greatest importance for psychology in so far as it is perhaps the most highly developed and differentiated symbol of the self, apart from the figure of the Buddha.

Only the shallow know themselves.

I think Buddhism should open the door of psychology and healing to penetrate more easily into the Western world.

When you are content to be simply yourself and don’t compare or compete, everybody will respect you.

We’re all insecure, aren’t we? I’m not walking around like I’m macho man or anything.

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

I’m no leader; I’m a little humble follower.

Basically you have to suppress your own ambitions in order to be who you need to be.

Trying to define yourself is like trying to bite your own teeth.

I said I was ‚The Greatest,‘ I never said I was the smartest!

You’re looking at a middle-class guy. I am who I am.

Control and surrender have to be kept in balance. That’s what surfers do – take control of the situation, then be carried, then take control. In the last few thousand years, we’ve become incredibly adept technically. We’ve treasured the controlling part of ourselves and neglected the surrendering part.

Begin to see yourself as a soul with a body rather than a body with a soul.

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.

What I can say is that all my characters are searching for their souls, because they are my mirrors. I’m someone who is constantly trying to understand my place in the world, and literature is the best way that I found in order to see myself.

Do not try to live forever. You will not succeed.

The only real failure in life is not to be true to the best one knows.

If I were two-faced, would I be wearing this one?

Hide our ignorance as we will, an evening of wine soon reveals it.

If you check your ego at the door when it comes to comedy, you’ve got a pretty good shot at making a great movie that you can commit yourself to, you can jump off the proverbial cliff with, and have a great time, and the audiences respond to that.

We have all had the experience of finding that our reactions and perhaps even our deeds have denied beliefs we thought were ours.

People are not disturbed by things, but by the view they take of them.

Trust not yourself, but your defects to know, make use of every friend and every foe.

Whoever undertakes to set himself up as a judge of Truth and Knowledge is shipwrecked by the laughter of the gods.

I can be jubilant one moment and pensive the next, and a cloud could go by and make that happen.

The only true wisdom is in knowing you know nothing.

No one’s policing their own minds more than an author. You spend a lot of time in your own head analysing what you think about things, and a philosophy comes.

He knows my limitations and where I’m a good wife and a good mom.

What’s wrong with being a boring kind of guy?

I’ve never professed to be anything but an average student.