The fact is, I was never too bright in school. I ain’t ashamed of it, though. I mean, how much do school principals make a month?

Vanity is but the surface.

We have a tendency to condemn people who are different from us, to define their sins as paramount and our own sinfulness as being insignificant.

Eternal nothingness is fine if you happen to be dressed for it.

What charitable 1 percenters can’t do is assume responsibility – America’s national responsibilities: the care of its sick and its poor, the education of its young, the repair of its failing infrastructure, the repayment of its staggering war debts.

Most of one’s life is one prolonged effort to prevent oneself thinking.

The personal ego already has a strong element of dysfunction, but the collective ego is, frequently, even more dysfunctional, to the point of absolute insanity.

Education is indoctrination if you’re white – subjugation if you’re black.

If you’re put on a pedestal, you’re supposed to behave yourself like a pedestal type of person. Pedestals actually have a limited circumference. Not much room to move around.

Leaders who fail to prune their pride will meet demise. That’s not a guess, it’s a guarantee. With pride, it’s not a matter of ‚if‘ we will fall, but ‚when.‘ There are no exceptions.

One must know oneself. If this does not serve to discover truth, it at least serves as a rule of life and there is nothing better.

To make your children capable of honesty is the beginning of education.

I go to school the youth to learn the future.

I want you to be everything that’s you, deep at the center of your being.

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.

Self-talk, for me, has been the biggest thing in my life. A lot of us have a dialogue that is crap. It’s a crappy dialogue. We live in a world right now that is very external. Everything is very on the surface. Superficial. Everything. And what we’re telling ourselves is what we see on TV.

What troubles me most about my lovely country is that its children are seldom taught that American freedom will vanish, if, when they grow up, and in the exercise of their duties as citizens, they insist that our courts and policemen and prisons be guided by divine or natural law.

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

At 30 a man should know himself like the palm of his hand, know the exact number of his defects and qualities, know how far he can go, foretell his failures – be what he is. And, above all, accept these things.

One mustn’t close one’s eyes to difficulty and to shortcomings; the more one recognizes them, the less they upset one.

Until justice is blind to color, until education is unaware of race, until opportunity is unconcerned with the color of men’s skins, emancipation will be a proclamation but not a fact.

I went to a lovely school, and I got an incredible education. And I actually think that my education is what really sets me apart, ‚cause I’m very smart.

I even found it difficult to watch myself playing on TV because I couldn’t identify with the person on the screen. I couldn’t get to grips with it. It was as if it was all happening to someone else.

So near is falsehood to truth that a wise man would do well not to trust himself on the narrow edge.

Everything that irritates us about others can lead us to an understanding of ourselves.

I find with most of my readers are kind of like me, sort of people who were a little bit naive in life and then learned the hard way that this is what’s going on, the political games and most of my readers write to me telling me that the book helped them open their eyes to what other people are doing to them.

Children are remarkable for their intelligence and ardor, for their curiosity, their intolerance of shams, the clarity and ruthlessness of their vision.

When you are young you tend to do so many things that are not needed. When you get experience, you know what exactly what works for you and you tend to do things that you want.

If we take the generally accepted definition of bravery as a quality which knows no fear, I have never seen a brave man. All men are frightened. The more intelligent they are, the more they are frightened.

For a highly motivated learner, it’s not like knowledge is secret and somehow the Internet made it not secret. It just made knowledge easy to find. If you’re a motivated enough learner, books are pretty good.

Is it not enough to know the evil to shun it? If not, we should be sincere enough to admit that we love evil too well to give it up.

The proper study of mankind is books.

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

Because I know about the Holy Land, I’ve taught lessons about the Holy Land all my life, and – but you can’t bring peace to Israel without giving the Palestinian also peace. And Lebanon and Jordan and Syria as well.

I had nearly finished school because I was making effort not that bad on that. But there was a law in Germany after the war. You could not make your final examination before 18, so lots of people who were late because of the way had to do it first.

There’s a part of you – the born-again part, your spirit – that’s dead to sin. That’s why it bothers you now when you sin. The ‚wilderness‘ part of you – your soul – is your unrenewed mind, out-of-control emotions, and stubborn will.

So let’s be honest with ourselves and not take ourselves too serious, and never condemn the other fellow for doing what we are doing every day, only in a different way.

I think I have always had a little humor.

You send a boy to school in order to make friends – the right sort.

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

Breathing in, I am aware of my heart. Breathing out, I smile to my heart and know that my heart still functions normally. I feel grateful for my heart.

And finally I twist my heart round again, so that the bad is on the outside and the good is on the inside, and keep on trying to find a way of becoming what I would so like to be, and could be, if there weren’t any other people living in the world.

I think what’s important is for us to decipher what is honest and what is dishonest and be accepting of those things and not operating from fear.

The first test of a truly great man is his humility. By humility I don’t mean doubt of his powers or hesitation in speaking his opinion, but merely an understanding of the relationship of what he can say and what he can do.

Genius might be the ability to say a profound thing in a simple way.

As long as I’m learning something, I figure I’m OK – it’s a decent day.

My overall look on things is a lot more mature than it used to be.

I’m not generally a sensitive person, but I tend to be more sensitive toward others and what they’re going through. I don’t know if that’s the healthiest thing, but it’s the truth.

The doorstep to the temple of wisdom is a knowledge of our own ignorance.

The intellectual tradition is one of servility to power, and if I didn’t betray it I’d be ashamed of myself.

Holding on to anger is like grasping a hot coal with the intent of throwing it at someone else; you are the one who gets burned.

If someone is going down the wrong road, he doesn’t need motivation to speed him up. What he needs is education to turn him around.

Untutored courage is useless in the face of educated bullets.

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.

I have all the emotions that everyone has; it just appears that I don’t.

Every thought you produce, anything you say, any action you do, it bears your signature.

So we know that it’s not enough for us to simply encourage more people to study abroad. We also need to make sure that they can actually afford it.

If you listen through the screen of your desires, then you obviously listen to your own voice; you are listening to your own desires.

Although I’m only fourteen, I know quite well what I want. I know who is right and who is wrong. I have my opinions, my own ideas and principles, and although it may sound pretty mad from an adolescent, I feel more of a person than a child. I feel quite independent of anyone.

Your emotions are very unstable and should never be the foundation for direction in your life.

Real knowledge is to know the extent of one’s ignorance.