The mind is a superb instrument if used rightly. Used wrongly, however, it becomes very destructive. To put it more accurately… you usually don’t use it at all. It uses you.

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

What lies behind you and what lies in front of you, pales in comparison to what lies inside of you.

I knew I wasn’t going to be a rocket scientist – let’s not be fools – but I wasn’t going to be a bum.

I’m 31 now. I think I’m beginning to understand what life is, what romance is, and what a relationship means.

I’ve learned that usually, the less I know about other people, the better off I am.

Undeserved praise causes more pangs of conscience later than undeserved blame, but probably only for this reason, that our power of judgment are more completely exposed by being over praised than by being unjustly underestimated.

Freedom conceives that the mind and spirit of man can be free only if he be free to pattern his own life, to develop his own talents, free to earn, to spend, to save, to acquire property as the security of his old age and his family.

Before you try to keep up with the Joneses, be sure they’re not trying to keep up with you.

Can the mind see the truth of its own incapacity to know the unknown? Surely if I see very clearly that my mind cannot know the unknown, there is absolute quietness.

People who add value to others do so intentionally. I say that because to add value, leaders must give of themselves, and that rarely occurs by accident.

The ideas gained by men before they are twenty-five are practically the only ideas they shall have in their lives.

Much of your pain is the bitter potion by which the physician within you heals your sick self.

I’m very secure about my talents and about who I am.

You can always cope with the present moment, but you cannot cope with something that is only a mind projection – you cannot cope with the future.

I break ground. I trailblaze.

The poet gives us his essence, but prose takes the mold of the body and mind.

I like to complain and do nothing to make things better.

Freedom means you are unobstructed in living your life as you choose. Anything less is a form of slavery.

Despair is a narcotic. It lulls the mind into indifference.

In retrospect, I can see I couldn’t talk to people face to face, so I got on stage and started screaming and squealing and twitching about. Ha! Like, that sure made sense!

My earliest books focus almost entirely on psychological tools to help readers employ effective commonsense approaches to problems. There are no references to God or a higher self in the first 15 or so years of my publishing history.

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

A day wasted on others is not wasted on one’s self.

Between stimulus and response, there is a space where we choose our response.

You know how advice is. You only want it if it agrees with what you wanted to do anyway.

To create something you must be something.

My public is growing up just as I am. After all, I’m not 19 anymore and if I stick with the sex bit, who will be paying to see me when I’m 50?

The greatest happiness is to know the source of unhappiness.

I have practically no private life. I’m already used to this and ready for it. Yes, sometimes it is hard, but it is the choice I made.

We are all at times unconscious prophets.

Culture is the process by which a person becomes all that they were created capable of being.

The world breaks everyone, and afterward, some are strong at the broken places.

Who looks outside, dreams; who looks inside, awakes.

Boot camp sucks – SEAL training sucks – but you know what? That’s what makes you good.

When you take your attention into the present moment, a certain alertness arises. You become more conscious of what’s around you, but also, strangely, a sense of presence that is both within and without.

I’m addicted to placebos.

When new turns of behavior cease to appear in the life of the individual, its behavior ceases to be intelligent.

I can well conceive a man without hands, feet, head. But I cannot conceive man without thought; he would be a stone or a brute.

Confidence is that feeling by which the mind embarks in great and honorable courses with a sure hope and trust in itself.

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

To be honest with you, when I got into this I never thought about reviews. I never thought about what people would say about me. I was just a young guy who was excited to become a comedian and an actor and I just wanted to get to do what I got to do.

I’ve never responded well to entrenched negative thinking.

I can never say ‚why‘ about anything I do. I suppose I can say ‚how‘ and ‚when‘ and ‚what.‘ But ‚why‘ is impenetrable to me.

The only true wisdom is in knowing you know nothing.

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

The way to develop decisiveness is to start right where you are, with the very next question you face.

The first condition of education is being able to put someone to wholesome and meaningful work.

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.

Leadership and learning are indispensable to each other.

Remember that your imagination is yours and yours alone. You have the inborn capacity to use it in any way that you choose. No one else is responsible for your imagination. Anything placed in your imagination and held there ultimately becomes your reality.

Association with human beings lures one into self-observation.

He who knows others is wise. He who knows himself is enlightened.

Order without liberty and liberty without order are equally destructive.

You can be obsessed with the bad things people say and the good things; either way, you’re obsessed with yourself, and I’m not – you can become unhinged so easily.

Everyone must be proactive and do all they can to help themselves to stay employed.

It’s not fun to get out of bed early in the morning. When the alarm goes off, it doesn’t sing you a song: it hits you in the head with a baseball bat. So how do you respond to that? Do you crawl underneath your covers and hide? Or do you get up, get aggressive, and attack the day?

One cannot violate the promptings of one’s nature without having that nature recoil upon itself.

The unsuccessful person is burdened by learning, and prefers to walk down familiar paths. Their distaste for learning stunts their growth and limits their influence.

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.

I tell everybody, I get so much because I give so much. I give freely, I give all my time, give all my money, give all of my soul. I try to motivate people. I try to inspire them.