The narrow bandwidth of TV has made us think that we are stupider than we are.

People make jokes about my bosoms, why don’t they look underneath the breasts at the heart? It’s obvious I’ve got big ones and if people want to assume they’re not mine, then let them.

It is well for the world that in most of us, by the age of thirty, the character has set like plaster, and will never soften again.

Enlightened people seldom or never possess a sense of responsibility.

Failure is simply the opportunity to begin again, this time more intelligently.

People wonder aloud about whether I am an okay mother. That is obviously painful because it’s so important to me. It’s hard to hear that people think I’m not a capable mother and a good person, that they just think I’m nuts.

Power does not change you, it unmasks you.

Build me a son, O Lord, who will be strong enough to know when he is weak, and brave enough to face himself when he is afraid, one who will be proud and unbending in honest defeat, and humble and gentle in victory.

I’ve seen firsthand that being president doesn’t change who you are. It reveals who you are.

I am, as a character, at times, a little overbearing. I recognize that.

High office teaches decision making, not substance. It consumes intellectual capital; it does not create it. Most high officials leave office with the perceptions and insights with which they entered; they learn how to make decisions but not what decisions to make.

I’m almost like three people. There’s me the, Dolly, the person. There’s me, the star. And then there’s me, the manager.

The truth is that you can only come to know God when you give up the past and the future in your mind and merge totally into the now, because God is always here now.

Each generation imagines itself to be more intelligent than the one that went before it, and wiser than the one that comes after it.

I’ve learned that you shouldn’t go through life with a catcher’s mitt on both hands; you need to be able to throw something back.

The mouth obeys poorly when the heart murmurs.

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.

Reality leaves a lot to the imagination.

Why does your mind conform? Have you ever asked? Are you aware that you are conforming to a pattern? It doesn’t matter what that pattern is, whether you have established a pattern for yourself or it has been established for you.

It takes considerable knowledge just to realize the extent of your own ignorance.

The greatest deception men suffer is from their own opinions.

You can have no dominion greater or less than that over yourself.

Nature shows that with the growth of intelligence comes increased capacity for pain, and it is only with the highest degree of intelligence that suffering reaches its supreme point.

The ego is nothing other than the focus of conscious attention.

He who lives in our mind is near though he may actually be far away; but he who is not in our heart is far though he may really be nearby.

Intelligent people should learn from their experiences. With people on the street, the bad experience has beaten them.

They’re right to think that about me, because I’m the person most likely to sleep with my female fans, I genuinely love other women. And I think they know that.

If I were two-faced, would I be wearing this one?

The CIA is made up of boys whose families sent them to Princeton but wouldn’t let them into the family brokerage business.

There can be no two opinions as to what a highbrow is. He is the man or woman of thoroughbred intelligence who rides his mind at a gallop across country in pursuit of an idea.

Let us begin by committing ourselves to the truth to see it like it is, and tell it like it is, to find the truth, to speak the truth, and to live the truth.

I do suffer from depression, I suppose. Which isn’t that unusual. You know, a lot of people do.

To accuse others for one’s own misfortunes is a sign of want of education. To accuse oneself shows that one’s education has begun. To accuse neither oneself nor others shows that one’s education is complete.

I felt I had to solve everyone’s problems.

It isn’t that they can’t see the solution. It is that they can’t see the problem.

I would impress upon your minds the fact that if you want to do a man justice, you should believe what a man says himself rather than what people say he says.

First and foremost, we need to be the adults we want our children to be. We should watch our own gossiping and anger. We should model the kindness we want to see.

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

Conscious of not being able to separate myself from my time, I have decided to become part of it.

I don’t consider myself an intellectual. And this is not one of my aims. But I admire intellectual people.

The ego is only an illusion, but a very influential one. Letting the ego-illusion become your identity can prevent you from knowing your true self. Ego, the false idea of believing that you are what you have or what you do, is a backwards way of assessing and living life.

The nice thing about being a celebrity is that, if you bore people, they think it’s their fault.

If we had a keen vision of all that is ordinary in human life, it would be like hearing the grass grow or the squirrel’s heart beat, and we should die of that roar which is the other side of silence.

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

I ask you to judge me by the enemies I have made.

What people call impartiality may simply mean indifference, and what people call partiality may simply mean mental activity.

We view things not only from different sides, but with different eyes; we have no wish to find them alike.

Man is the most intelligent of the animals – and the most silly.

Our personal intelligence is everlasting and divine.

I worked out early on to give up things I couldn’t do well at all.

Nothing is more terrible than activity without insight.

I think the best thing I ever did with my life was stand up and say I’ve got Alzheimer’s.

My crown is called content, a crown that seldom kings enjoy.

Man can hardly even recognize the devils of his own creation.

Perception often lags behind reality, and I can say from experience that the vast majority of public officials in Louisiana are much better than our reputation holds us to be.

Why does the eye see a thing more clearly in dreams than the imagination when awake?

I have learned that as long as I hold fast to my beliefs and values – and follow my own moral compass – then the only expectations I need to live up to are my own.

In Hollywood the woods are full of people that learned to write but evidently can’t read. If they could read their stuff, they’d stop writing.

Genius… means little more than the faculty of perceiving in an unhabitual way.

Sometimes when you’ve had a long series of disappointing things happen, you can get into the very bad habit of just expecting more of what you’ve already had.

Not only is there but one way of doing things rightly, but there is only one way of seeing them, and that is, seeing the whole of them.