The thing about delirium is you think it’s great, but it actually isn’t.

If we hope for what we are not likely to possess, we act and think in vain, and make life a greater dream and shadow than it really is.

The foolish man conceives the idea of ‚self.‘ The wise man sees there is no ground on which to build the idea of ‚self;‘ thus, he has a right conception of the world and well concludes that all compounds amassed by sorrow will be dissolved again, but the truth will remain.

I noticed words crudely spray-painted upon the wall, perhaps by a young Berliner: ‚This wall will fall. Beliefs become reality.‘ Yes, across Europe, this wall will fall. For it cannot withstand faith; it cannot withstand truth. The wall cannot withstand freedom.

The golden moments in the stream of life rush past us, and we see nothing but sand; the angels come to visit us, and we only know them when they are gone.

We make up horrors to help us cope with the real ones.

Memories are thoughts that arise. They’re not realities. Only when you believe that they are real, then they have the power over you. But when you realize it’s just another thought arising about the past, then you can have a spacious relationship with that thought. The thought no longer has you in its grip.

I have found out in later years that we were very poor, but the glory of America is that we didn’t know it then.

Every man casts a shadow; not his body only, but his imperfectly mingled spirit. This is his grief. Let him turn which way he will, it falls opposite to the sun; short at noon, long at eve. Did you never see it?

Words are more powerful than some noises. Noises won’t last long. Lyrics are so important, and people don’t realise that.

The young are permanently in a state resembling intoxication.

Life tends to be an accumulation of a lot of mundane decisions, which often gets ignored.

An error does not become truth by reason of multiplied propagation, nor does truth become error because nobody sees it.

Africa is a continent in flames. And deep down, if we really accepted that Africans were equal to us, we would all do more to put the fire out. We’re standing around with watering cans, when what we really need is the fire brigade.

You do not need to leave your room. Remain sitting at your table and listen. Do not even listen, simply wait, be quiet still and solitary. The world will freely offer itself to you to be unmasked, it has no choice, it will roll in ecstasy at your feet.

The awareness that health is dependent upon habits that we control makes us the first generation in history that to a large extent determines its own destiny.

In a lot of ways, success is much harder than I thought it would be. I figured that you’d get here and then everything would be happily ever after. But, it’s hard work, almost harder once you’re successful because you’ve got to maintain it.

Sometimes I wonder if I’m as famous for my wheelchair and disabilities as I am for my discoveries.

Here’s something that’s contrary to popular belief: I actually don’t like thinking. I think people think I like to think a lot. And I don’t. I do not like to think at all.

All that we see or seem is but a dream within a dream.

Every war when it comes, or before it comes, is represented not as a war but as an act of self-defense against a homicidal maniac.

In Italy they take cheap cloth and make it look expensive, but I take expensive cloth and make it look cheap. They just don’t understand.

An Englishman thinks he is moral when he is only uncomfortable.

I love it when Muslims go to war with each other, as I do when the Christians do, because it shows there’s no such thing as the Christian world and the Islamic world. That’s all crap.

I confused things with their names: that is belief.

When you’re not engaged in the day-to-day struggles that everybody feels, you slowly start losing touch. And I think it’s important for the people in the White House to have a finger on the pulse.

It’s hard to wrap my head around the fact that there are people who can’t or won’t see what Black Lives Matter is trying to accomplish.

Fiction is based on reality unless you’re a fairytale artist.

Every step of life shows much caution is required.

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

I think feminists are unaware of the tremendous extent of the role of women in history.

Nature never deceives us; it is we who deceive ourselves.

No object is so beautiful that, under certain conditions, it will not look ugly.

Whether you call it Buddhism or another religion, self-discipline, that’s important. Self-discipline with awareness of consequences.

The wisest hustler can suddenly fall for the worst tramp and lose all of his money on her. The hustler is aware of his own weaknesses and openings to con. This awareness is his edge.

I would warn you that I do not attribute to nature either beauty or deformity, order or confusion. Only in relation to our imagination can things be called beautiful or ugly, well-ordered or confused.

In my experience, many people confuse being cowardly with being nice.

The eye of a human being is a microscope, which makes the world seem bigger than it really is.

Words do two major things: They provide food for the mind and create light for understanding and awareness.

Facts do not cease to exist because they are ignored.

Only that day dawns to which we are awake.

The price of freedom is eternal vigilance.

Light thinks it travels faster than anything but it is wrong. No matter how fast light travels, it finds the darkness has always got there first, and is waiting for it.

How is it possible that a being with such sensitive jewels as the eyes, such enchanted musical instruments as the ears, and such fabulous arabesque of nerves as the brain can experience itself anything less than a god.

I know now that there is no one thing that is true – it is all true.

When you’re writing a novel, you don’t want the reader to come out of it voting yes or no to some question. Life is more complicated than that. Reality simply consists of different points of view.

If somebody thinks they’re a hedgehog, presumably you just give ‚em a mirror and a few pictures of hedgehogs and tell them to sort it out for themselves.

Reality must take precedence over public relations, for nature cannot be fooled.

Women have no sympathy and my experience of women is almost as large as Europe.

Seven hundred thousand people who have dementia in this country are not heard. I’m fortunate; I can be heard. Regrettably, it’s amazing how people listen if you stand up in public and give away $1 million for research into the disease, as I have done.

We are more often frightened than hurt; and we suffer more from imagination than from reality.

He had but one eye, and the popular prejudice runs in favor of two.

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.

All knowledge or form conception is evoked through the medium of the eye, either in response to disturbances directly received on the retina or to their fainter secondary effects and reverberations. Other sense organs can only call forth feelings which have no reality of existence and of which no conception can be formed.

Religion, any religion, no matter what sort of wonderful religion, never be universal. So now education is universal, so we have to sort of find ways and means through education system, from kindergarten up to university level, to make awareness these good things, the values, inner values.

Read about history, and you become aware that nothing starts with us.

People only see what they are prepared to see.

I know black people love the idea that we finally have a beautiful, good-looking black president. But if he is doing awful things to us, we should wake up.

To see clearly is poetry, prophecy and religion all in one.

There is an optical illusion about every person we meet.

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