The human voice can never reach the distance that is covered by the still small voice of conscience.

Remembering what you’ve been through and how that has strengthened your mindset can lift you out of a negative brain loop and help you bypass those weak, one-second impulses to give in. Even if you’re feeling low and beat down by life right now, I guarantee you can think of a time or two when you overcame odds and tasted success.

Whosoever is delighted in solitude is either a wild beast or a god.

Violence, even well intentioned, always rebounds upon oneself.

I like actors very much, but to marry one would be like marrying your brother. You look too much alike in the mirror.

Here comes 40. I’m feeling my age and I’ve ordered the Ferrari. I’m going to get the whole mid-life crisis package.

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

It is right to give every man his due.

Morality is of the highest importance – but for us, not for God.

I am God’s vessel. But my greatest pain in life is that I will never be able to see myself perform live.

Virtue consists, not in abstaining from vice, but in not desiring it.

In Christianity neither morality nor religion come into contact with reality at any point.

Sin cannot be conceived in a natural state, but only in a civil state, where it is decreed by common consent what is good or bad.

If you are lonely when you’re alone, you are in bad company.

The self is hateful.

There are very few people who are going to look into the mirror and say, ‚That person I see is a savage monster;‘ instead, they make up some construction that justifies what they do.

We all have the duty to do good.

I’m all about evolution. I’m the first person to judge myself.

I don’t think that much about my relationship with my mother and what it did to me. I sometimes feel terrible regret about her, what her life must have been like. Often, when I’m enjoying something, I think of how meager her rewards were and how much courage, in a way, she needed to go on living.

A leader who doesn’t hesitate before he sends his nation into battle is not fit to be a leader.

I don’t do research. I never have.

A lot of times, I run a thought experiment: ‚If I were not at Facebook, what would I be doing to make the world more open?‘

There is the good and the bad, the great and the low, the just and the unjust. I swear to you that all that will never change.

There is no satisfaction in hanging a man who does not object to it.

These are all personal crises, I’m sure, that I manifest in a song format and project into physical situations. You make little stories up about how you feel. It’s as simple as that.

I think my worst problem is actually living in the moment and understanding everything that’s going on. I feel like I’m in my own bubble.

All human evil comes from a single cause, man’s inability to sit still in a room.

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.

The questions which one asks oneself begin, at least, to illuminate the world, and become one’s key to the experience of others.

If your heart is a volcano, how shall you expect flowers to bloom?

Will not a tiny speck very close to our vision blot out the glory of the world, and leave only a margin by which we see the blot? I know no speck so troublesome as self.

I don’t have to see a murder in order to condemn murder.

Where is the justice of political power if it executes the murderer and jails the plunderer, and then itself marches upon neighboring lands, killing thousands and pillaging the very hills?

It is more from carelessness about truth than from intentionally lying that there is so much falsehood in the world.

If men were born free, they would, so long as they remained free, form no conception of good and evil.

Treat those who are good with goodness, and also treat those who are not good with goodness. Thus goodness is attained. Be honest to those who are honest, and be also honest to those who are not honest. Thus honesty is attained.

There is only one difference between a madman and me. The madman thinks he is sane. I know I am mad.

I am always wary of decisions made hastily. I am always wary of the first decision, that is, the first thing that comes to my mind if I have to make a decision. This is usually the wrong thing. I have to wait and assess, looking deep into myself, taking the necessary time.

For me, one of the toughest things about Valentine’s Day is that it gets geared up as the day to profess your love. See, T-E-S-T – that’s a bad word that doesn’t go with L-O-V-E.

I love playing ego and insecurity combined.

First of all, you ask me if the God of Christians forgives one who doesn’t believe and doesn’t seek the faith. Premise that – and it’s the fundamental thing – the mercy of God has no limits if one turns to him with a sincere and contrite heart; the question for one who doesn’t believe in God lies in obeying one’s conscience.

I owe my solitude to other people.

Live your life as though your every act were to become a universal law.

One that confounds good and evil is an enemy to good.

Conscience is a mother-in-law whose visit never ends.

I experience a period of frightening clarity in those moments when nature is so beautiful. I am no longer sure of myself, and the paintings appear as in a dream.

Morality is the basis of things and truth is the substance of all morality.

It is forbidden to kill; therefore all murderers are punished unless they kill in large numbers and to the sound of trumpets.

Knowledge of the self is the mother of all knowledge. So it is incumbent on me to know my self, to know it completely, to know its minutiae, its characteristics, its subtleties, and its very atoms.

I reject any religious doctrine that does not appeal to reason and is in conflict with morality.

I write for myself things that I’ve gone through.

Suppose you could gain everything in the whole world, and lost your soul. Was it worth it?

Money, not morality, is the principle commerce of civilized nations.

Trust should be the basis for all our moral training.

He who commits injustice is ever made more wretched than he who suffers it.

I do not recognize the right of the public to break in the front door of a man’s private life in order to satisfy the gaze of the curious… I do not think it right to dissect living men even for the advancement of science. So far as I am concerned, I prefer a post mortem examination to vivisection without anaesthetics.

See how many are better off than you are, but consider how many are worse.

You cannot hope to sweep someone else away by the force of your writing until it has been done to you.

I change during the course of a day. I wake and I’m one person, and when I go to sleep I know for certain I’m somebody else.

When we see persons of worth, we should think of equaling them; when we see persons of a contrary character, we should turn inwards and examine ourselves.

Adversity leads us to think properly of our state, and so is most beneficial to us.