The ideas I stand for are not mine. I borrowed them from Socrates. I swiped them from Chesterfield. I stole them from Jesus. And I put them in a book. If you don’t like their rules, whose would you use?

Hegel was right when he said that we learn from history that man can never learn anything from history.

If I’m gonna write songs about my exes, they can write songs about me. That’s how it works.

Most people dream a dream when they are asleep. But to be a writer, you have to dream while you are awake, intentionally. So I get up early in the morning, 4 o’clock, and I sit at my desk and what I do is just dream. After three or four hours, that’s enough. In the afternoon, I run. The next day, the dream will continue.

It is not in the stars to hold our destiny but in ourselves.

If a work of art is rich and vital and complete, those who have artistic instincts will see its beauty, and those to whom ethics appeal more strongly than aesthetics will see its moral lesson. It will fill the cowardly with terror, and the unclean will see in it their own shame.

When a distinguished but elderly scientist states that something is possible, he is almost certainly right. When he states that something is impossible, he is very probably wrong.

Life is one grand, sweet song, so start the music.

Do not impose on others what you yourself do not desire.

They say marriages are made in Heaven. But so is thunder and lightning.

Great indebtedness does not make men grateful, but vengeful; and if a little charity is not forgotten, it turns into a gnawing worm.

Our moments of inspiration are not lost though we have no particular poem to show for them; for those experiences have left an indelible impression, and we are ever and anon reminded of them.

Maybe this world is another planet’s hell.

The world is a republic of mediocrities, and always was.

The influence of ‚Hidden Fortress‘ comes up a lot because it was printed in a book once. The truth is, the only thing I was inspired by was the fact that it’s told from the point of view of two peasants, who get mixed up with a samurai and princess and a lot of very high-level people.

If I’m inspired to make a certain kind of song, I’m going to make that kind of song, no matter if it’s what they know me as or think I am.

The chief contribution of Protestantism to human thought is its massive proof that God is a bore.

Let us not listen to those who think we ought to be angry with our enemies, and who believe this to be great and manly. Nothing is so praiseworthy, nothing so clearly shows a great and noble soul, as clemency and readiness to forgive.

An author writes a book, and that’s the book at that point. And if the author writes the book again, then somehow something has gone wrong, if you see what I mean.

It is in life as it is in ways, the shortest way is commonly the foulest, and surely the fairer way is not much about.

The most practical kind of politics is the politics of decency.

There have to be reasons that you get up in the morning and you want to live. Why do you want to live? What’s the point? What inspires you? What do you love about the future? If the future does not include being out there among the stars and being a multi-planet species, I find that incredibly depressing.

Your philosophy determines whether you will go for the disciplines or continue the errors.

You and I are all as much continuous with the physical universe as a wave is continuous with the ocean.

A man watches his pear tree day after day, impatient for the ripening of the fruit. Let him attempt to force the process, and he may spoil both fruit and tree. But let him patiently wait, and the ripe pear at length falls into his lap.

I shall never be ashamed of citing a bad author if the line is good.

Not when truth is dirty, but when it is shallow, does the enlightened man dislike to wade into its waters.

Judgments, value judgments concerning life, for or against, can in the last resort never be true: they possess value only as symptoms, they come into consideration only as symptoms – in themselves such judgments are stupidities.

Wisdom I know is social. She seeks her fellows. But Beauty is jealous, and illy bears the presence of a rival.

All that I know about my life, it seems, I have learned in books.

No one can be happy who has been thrust outside the pale of truth. And there are two ways that one can be removed from this realm: by lying, or by being lied to.

There are 309 million people out there that are trying to improve their lot in life. And we’ve got a system that allows them to do it.

Nonviolence is a good policy when the conditions permit.

The primary distinction of the artist is that he must actively cultivate that state which most men, necessarily, must avoid; the state of being alone.

We are here to laugh at the odds and live our lives so well that Death will tremble to take us.

There is no great genius without some touch of madness.

Love, we say, is life; but love without hope and faith is agonizing death.

A little knowledge that acts is worth infinitely more than much knowledge that is idle.

There is not enough love and goodness in the world to permit giving any of it away to imaginary beings.

Good judgment comes from experience, and a lot of that comes from bad judgment.

The most wasted of all days is one without laughter.

Experience is something you don’t get until just after you need it.

You see things; and you say ‚Why?‘ But I dream things that never were; and I say ‚Why not?‘

Knowledge without justice ought to be called cunning rather than wisdom.

Beauty without grace is the hook without the bait.

Words without thoughts never to heaven go.

Only a man’s character is the real criterion of worth.

I’m too busy acting like I’m not Naive. I’ve seen it all, I was here first.

One of the things you do when you make a piece of art is you try to make the world you’d rather be in.

No evil can happen to a good man, either in life or after death. He and his are not neglected by the gods.

The Tao that can be told is not the eternal Tao; the name that can be named is not the eternal name. The Nameless is the origin of Heaven and Earth; the Named is the mother of all things.

I have a message to give to the world, and I shall not be thwarted.

Premature certainty is the enemy of the truth.

I intend to inspire people with my story: motivate young people that grew up like myself, or even not like myself. Just, you know, go through the human experience.

Just as the wave cannot exist for itself, but is ever a part of the heaving surface of the ocean, so must I never live my life for itself, but always in the experience which is going on around me.

To go to the world below, having a soul which is like a vessel full of injustice, is the last and worst of all the evils.

Hope is a good breakfast, but it is a bad supper.

Everywhere I go I find that people… both leaders and individuals… are asking one basic question, ‚Is there any hope for the future?‘ My answer is the same, ‚Yes, through Jesus Christ.‘

Forty is the old age of youth, fifty is the youth of old age.

If you tell people where to go, but not how to get there, you’ll be amazed at the results.

My life is my message.