The person we believe ourselves to be will always act in a manner consistent with our self-image.

If you want to achieve something, you build the basis for it.

The people who truly know me know what I’m like. There have been people who try to say things that aren’t fair, and I check them. And then they don’t like me because I checked them.

Most men are within a finger’s breadth of being mad.

Language is an intrinsic part of who we are and what has, for good or evil, happened to us.

The difference between what we do and what we are capable of doing would suffice to solve most of the world’s problems.

If you’re treated a certain way you become a certain kind of person. If certain things are described to you as being real they’re real for you whether they’re real or not.

I had a period in my life where I decided that I would never be bored again and that, if I had any free time at all, I would make plans, and I would always be doing things. It actually was great for a year or so, but then I lost all of my friends.

I’m nobody, who are you?

Please think of me like an endangered species and just observe me quietly from far away. If you try to talk to me or touch me casually, I may get intimidated and bite you. So please be careful.

Your body has space within you that cannot die.

Your ability to use the principle of autosuggestion will depend, very largely, upon your capacity to concentrate upon a given desire until that desire becomes a burning obsession.

Only Americans can hurt America.

I wish I knew why I am so anguished.

Why do I talk about the benefits of failure? Simply because failure meant a stripping away of the inessential. I stopped pretending to myself that I was anything other than what I was, and began to direct all my energy into finishing the only work that mattered to me.

Men show their character in nothing more clearly than what they think laughable.

Which government is the best? The one that teaches us to govern ourselves.

Egos are never nice. I have been a victim of it a lot of times in my career. Whenever I have used it, I have failed.

Being humble matters.

I used to let other people’s struggles affect my happiness. If they weren’t happy, there was no way I was going to be happy. The opposite was also true: If I wasn’t happy, I didn’t want anyone around me to be happy.

There’s definitely going to be things that I’m not very good at, things I can improve.

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

I’m not confused. I’m just well mixed.

I think there is a lot made out of age, and what age you feel.

I imagine one of the reasons people cling to their hates so stubbornly is because they sense, once hate is gone, they will be forced to deal with pain.

People who fly into a rage always make a bad landing.

We have a tendency to condemn people who are different from us, to define their sins as paramount and our own sinfulness as being insignificant.

What’s money? A man is a success if he gets up in the morning and goes to bed at night and in between does what he wants to do.

How many cares one loses when one decides not to be something but to be someone.

In order to heal others, we first need to heal ourselves. And to heal ourselves, we need to know how to deal with ourselves.

When we get to wishing a great deal for ourselves, whatever we get soon turns into mere limitation and exclusion.

Passions are vices or virtues to their highest powers.

Patience is not simply the ability to wait – it’s how we behave while we’re waiting.

When it comes to everybody else’s thing and their lane and their timing, I’m never doing anything intentional to, like, come after somebody. That will always be my biggest mistake or anybody’s biggest mistake if that’s their intention.

A man can’t be too careful in the choice of his enemies.

You can’t hire someone to practice for you.

The only thing that interferes with my learning is my education.

What a man believes may be ascertained, not from his creed, but from the assumptions on which he habitually acts.

The only thing is, people have to develop courage. It is most important of all the virtues. Because without courage, you can’t practice any other virtues consistently.

It would be an egregious mistake to ever refer to me in the same breath as most of the people I write about.

The personal ego already has a strong element of dysfunction, but the collective ego is, frequently, even more dysfunctional, to the point of absolute insanity.

I never thought I’d land in pictures with a face like mine.

Getting recognized is insane. It just blows my mind. Like, someone who you don’t know at all can just be like, ‚Oh my God – are you Billie?‘

Anger is never without a reason, but seldom with a good one.

If you could kick the person in the pants responsible for most of your trouble, you wouldn’t sit for a month.

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.

The mouth obeys poorly when the heart murmurs.

Catering to bad feelings feeds and empowers them.

None are more taken in by flattery than the proud, who wish to be the first and are not.

Our judgments when we are pleased and friendly are not the same as when we are pained and hostile.

As human beings, our greatness lies not so much in being able to remake the world – that is the myth of the atomic age – as in being able to remake ourselves.

Just as the humble, unassuming, assenting ‚O.K.‘ has deposed the more affirmative ‚Yes,‘ so the little cringe and hesitation and approximation of ‚like‘ are a help to young people who are struggling to negotiate the shoals and rapids of ethnic identity, the street, and general correctness.

Self-actualized people are independent of the good opinion of others.

To create something you must be something.

I think who you are in school really sticks with you. I don’t ever feel like the cool kid at the party, ever. It’s like, ‚Smile and be nice to everybody, because you were not invited to be here.‘

The strongest principle of growth lies in the human choice.

So near is falsehood to truth that a wise man would do well not to trust himself on the narrow edge.

Funk, I don’t think I have anything to do with funk. I’ve never considered myself funky.

Who you are speaks so loudly I can’t hear what you’re saying.

We are not angry with people we fear or respect, as long as we fear or respect them; you cannot be afraid of a person and also at the same time angry with him.

What I am looking for is not out there, it is in me.