The highest result of education is tolerance.

A person once asked me, in a provocative manner, if I approved of homosexuality. I replied with another question: ‚Tell me: when God looks at a gay person, does he endorse the existence of this person with love, or reject and condemn this person?‘ We must always consider the person.

Men must know their limitations.

The beginning of compunction is the beginning of a new life.

If evil be spoken of you and it be true, correct yourself, if it be a lie, laugh at it.

The longer I live, the more I feel that true repose consists in ‚renouncing‘ one’s own self, by which I mean making up one’s mind to admit that there is no importance whatever in being ‚happy‘ or ‚unhappy‘ in the usual meaning of the words.

Nature has always had more force than education.

When you revolutionize education, you’re taking the very mechanism of how people be smarter and do new things, and you’re priming the pump for so many incredible things.

It is never too late to give up our prejudices.

I have made good judgments in the past. I have made good judgments in the future.

I let people fill in the blanks on their own. If they want to think about their ex, that’s fine. If they want to think about maybe who one of my exes is, then that’s fine. And it might not be right, because I’m the only one who knows what these songs are really about. It’s the one shred of privacy I have in the matter.

The best part about being in your thirties is you know what works for you.

I was married a few times, and one of my husbands was jealous of me writing.

I think it’s a very good thing to leave your country and look at it from afar.

Singing into a microphone and learning to play an instrument – learning to do your craft – that’s the most important thing! It’s not about what goes on in a computer!

If you have the chance to be exposed to a loving, understanding environment where the seed of compassion, loving kindness, can be watered every day, then you become a more loving person.

Few men would dare to read their own autobiography if all their deeds were recorded in it; few can look back upon their entire career without a blush.

I feel the emotion that life conjures up and the songs I write get me closer to my feelings and realising who I am. It’s a natural process.

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

Only by joy and sorrow does a person know anything about themselves and their destiny. They learn what to do and what to avoid.

More people should read books. It’s the most concentrated experience you can have.

I’m not a natural performer or exhibitionist. When I was younger, I hated the focus, and it made me feel strange.

If you are not willing to risk the unusual, you will have to settle for the ordinary.

I don’t think any country is perfect. It’s our responsibility to do the best we can do to change the things we don’t like. I think that’s part of social responsibility, and everybody is going to do that in their own way.

The first time you say something, it’s heard. The second time, it’s recognized, and the third time it’s learned.

I haven’t changed at all. I’m the same as when I was 11.

If you dream the proper dreams, and share the myths with people, they will want to grow up to be like you.

Playing Etta James in the movie ‚Cadillac Records‘ really changed me. It was a darker character, and I realized that if anything is too comfortable, I want to run from it. It’s no fun being safe.

Whoever fights monsters should see to it that in the process he does not become a monster. And if you gaze long enough into an abyss, the abyss will gaze back into you.

When I grew up, the Devil was a reason why I had a headache or the Devil was the reason I got mad today. We always blamed the Devil. I think today when I say the Enemy, I like to make it broader. Sometimes the Enemy can be our own thoughts.

If you do not change direction, you may end up where you are heading.

Women tend to be more intuitive, or to admit to being intuitive, and maybe the hard science approach isn’t so attractive. The way that science is taught is very cold. I would never have become a scientist if I had been taught like that.

Responsibility, I believe, accrues through privilege.

The experience of life consists of the experience which the spirit has of itself in matter and as matter, in mind and as mind, in emotion, as emotion, etc.

Do not be embarrassed by your failures, learn from them and start again.

Of all acts of man repentance is the most divine. The greatest of all faults is to be conscious of none.

You will be as much value to others as you have been to yourself.

Some minds remain open long enough for the truth not only to enter but to pass on through by way of a ready exit without pausing anywhere along the route.

I add this, that rational ability without education has oftener raised man to glory and virtue, than education without natural ability.

Every human being is under construction from conception to death.

We are not living in a world where all roads are radii of a circle and where all, if followed long enough, will therefore draw gradually nearer and finally meet at the centre: rather in a world where every road, after a few miles, forks into two, and each of those into two again, and at each fork, you must make a decision.

I am who I am and I say what I think. I’m not putting a face on for the record.

Anybody who tells you that a two-day conference, you’re going to turn into the General Patton of leadership, they’re not telling you the truth. But you can learn the fundamentals; you can absolutely understand the fundamentals.

A great part of courage is the courage of having done the thing before.

You have to be able to accept failure to get better.

Most Africans don’t get to see these wild animals at all. Once they see and learn about them, they are much more likely to become involved in protecting the environment.

I went by myself to Hollywood, I spoke no English, every day I had to go to school.

I am a big believer in education, because when I grew up in Austria – when I grew up in Austria I had a great education. I had great teachers.

Older people sit down and ask, ‚What is it?‘ but the boy asks, ‚What can I do with it?‘.

I never come back home with the same moral character I went out with; something or other becomes unsettled where I had achieved internal peace; some one or other of the things I had put to flight reappears on the scene.

Most of us aren’t defeated in one decisive battle. We are defeated one tiny, seemingly insignificant surrender at a time that chips away at who we should really be.

If you try to protect yourself from pain, it becomes a stone in your heart. But the more you learn to face things, the more likely that stone can become a pearl.

Men have a respect for scholarship and learning greatly out of proportion to the use they commonly serve.

The equal right of all citizens to health, education, work, food, security, culture, science, and wellbeing – that is, the same rights we proclaimed when we began our struggle, in addition to those which emerge from our dreams of justice and equality for all inhabitants of our world – is what I wish for all.

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

Character is power.

If a subject excites us, if it stirs our deepest curiosity, or if we have to learn because the stakes are high, we pay much more attention. What we absorb sinks in.

Failure is not a single, cataclysmic event. You don’t fail overnight. Instead, failure is a few errors in judgement, repeated every day.

Employers have decided that having the breadth of knowledge that’s associated with a four-year degree is often something they want to see in the people they give that job to.

A well-instructed people alone can be permanently a free people.

Flying is learning how to throw yourself at the ground and miss.