The world is put back by the death of every one who has to sacrifice the development of his or her peculiar gifts to conventionality.

As a remedy to life in society I would suggest the big city. Nowadays, it is the only desert within our means.

Either you think, or else others have to think for you and take power from you, pervert and discipline your natural tastes, civilize and sterilize you.

I always entertain the notion that I’m wrong, or that I’ll have to revise my opinion. Most of the time that feels good; sometimes it really hurts and is embarrassing.

My whole life has been one big improvisation.

A scholar who cherishes the love of comfort is not fit to be deemed a scholar.

The only cure for contempt is counter-contempt.

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

People have a hard time letting go of their suffering. Out of a fear of the unknown, they prefer suffering that is familiar.

Every man should know, if you’re comfortable and you like it, you should do it. Everyone always worries about what the girls think, what the guys think. If you like it, do it.

When I write about a 15-year old, I jump, I return to the days when I was that age. It’s like a time machine. I can remember everything. I can feel the wind. I can smell the air. Very actually. Very vividly.

No greater thing is created suddenly, any more than a bunch of grapes or a fig. If you tell me that you desire a fig, I answer you that there must be time. Let it first blossom, then bear fruit, then ripen.

The community which has neither poverty nor riches will always have the noblest principles.

It’s very hard to find your own words – and you don’t actually exist until you have your own words.

Hair is about when you’re younger. I am my hair.

If you’re not producing as much as you consume, or perhaps a little more, then clearly we cannot use the big organization of our society for the purpose of keeping you alive, because your life does not benefit us, and it can’t be of very much use to yourself.

If you don’t like what you’re doing, then don’t do it.

Knowledge can be communicated, but not wisdom. One can find it, live it, be fortified by it, do wonders through it, but one cannot communicate and teach it.

Things don’t have to change the world to be important.

The most challenging project I’ve ever done, I think, is every single thing I’ve ever tried to do. It’s never easy.

If two men agree on everything, you may be sure that one of them is doing the thinking.

I can’t jump the highest. I’m obviously not the biggest, not the strongest.

I’m all about evolution. I’m the first person to judge myself.

I got my own back.

People don’t care about what someone says about you in a movie – or even what you say, right? They care about what you build. And if you can make something that makes people’s life better, then that’s something that’s really good.

We should all be obliged to appear before a board every five years and justify our existence… on pain of liquidation.

I put a lot of pressure on myself. I think something’s not good enough, and I won’t stop until I feel like I’ve made it. I’m never satisfied.

We have the power to make this the best generation of mankind in the history of the world or to make it the last.

My purpose is to help people look at themselves and begin to shift their concepts. Remember, we are not our country, our race, or religion. We are eternal spirits. Seeing ourselves as spiritual beings without label is a way to transform the world and reach a sacred place for all of humanity.

I had never been in charge of anything. I’d always worked for someone. I worked for a furniture warehouse. I did masonry. I always had a boss yelling at me. So I’d never been in charge of an organization.

Let go of yesterday.

I think the first duty of society is justice.

I always say, decisions I make, I live with them. There’s always ways you can correct them or ways you can do them better. At the end of the day, I live with them.

I don’t live in the past at all; I’m always wanting to do something new. I make a point of constantly trying to forget and get things out of my mind.

You must live for another if you wish to live for yourself.

Every seven years, I sit down and make a whole new plan.

Every revolution evaporates and leaves behind only the slime of a new bureaucracy.

It is impossible, in our condition of Society, not to be sometimes a Snob.

We just seem to have lost all our morals and principles and values these days.

Your Highest Self is not just an idea that sounds lofty and spiritual. It is a way of being. It is the very first principle that you must come to understand and embrace as you move toward attracting to you that which you want and need for this parenthesis in eternity that you know as your life.

Upon the education of the people of this country the fate of this country depends.

One must know oneself. If this does not serve to discover truth, it at least serves as a rule of life and there is nothing better.

It is a fact that cannot be denied: the wickedness of others becomes our own wickedness because it kindles something evil in our own hearts.

Knowledge of the self is the mother of all knowledge. So it is incumbent on me to know my self, to know it completely, to know its minutiae, its characteristics, its subtleties, and its very atoms.

We have but one permanent home: heaven – that’s still the old truth that we always have to re-learn – and it’s only through the impact of sad experiences that we assimilate it.

It were a real increase of human happiness, could all young men from the age of nineteen be covered under barrels, or rendered otherwise invisible; and there left to follow their lawful studies and callings, till they emerged, sadder and wiser, at the age of twenty-five.

Hell is yourself and the only redemption is when a person puts himself aside to feel deeply for another person.

The greatness of a nation can be judged by the way its animals are treated.

To become ‚unique,‘ the challenge is to fight the hardest battle which anyone can imagine until you reach your destination.

Our modern society – especially in the West, and especially now – reveres youth.

There is a natural aristocracy among men. The grounds of this are virtue and talents.

Death is a commingling of eternity with time; in the death of a good man, eternity is seen looking through time.

My heart aches for America and its deceived people.

Every man is more than just himself; he also represents the unique, the very special and always significant and remarkable point at which the world’s phenomena intersect, only once in this way, and never again.

Strive not to be a success, but rather to be of value.

You have power over your mind – not outside events. Realize this, and you will find strength.

Boys do cry, but I don’t think I shed a tear for a good chunk of my teenage years.

Trials teach us what we are; they dig up the soil, and let us see what we are made of.

Music is always a commentary on society.

While the rest of the world has been improving technology, Ghana has been improving the quality of man’s humanity to man.

I don’t live by all these rigid, weird rules that make me feel all fenced in. I just like the way that I feel like, and that makes me feel very free.