Thinking: the talking of the soul with itself.

I don’t believe in an outside agent that creates the world, then walks away. But I feel very strongly there is an intelligence at work in every flower, in every blade of grass, in every cell of my body. And it is that intelligence that, I wouldn’t say created the universe. It is creating the universe. It’s an ongoing process.

Silence is more eloquent than words.

We have lived long enough to experience the hollowness of earth and the rottenness of all carnal promises.

The great enemy of clear language is insincerity. When there is a gap between one’s real and one’s declared aims, one turns, as it were, instinctively to long words and exhausted idioms, like a cuttlefish squirting out ink.

I hold a lot of things in. I’m always making sure everybody is okay. I usually don’t rage; I usually don’t curse. So for me, it’s a great thing to be able to scream and say whatever I want.

It is not death or pain that is to be dreaded, but the fear of pain or death.

But men must know, that in this theatre of man’s life it is reserved only for God and angels to be lookers on.

It seems, in fact, as though the second half of a man’s life is made up of nothing, but the habits he has accumulated during the first half.

He that speaks much, is much mistaken.

It’s a question of whether we’re going to go forward into the future, or past to the back.

Much unhappiness has come into the world because of bewilderment and things left unsaid.

As men are not able to fight against death, misery, ignorance, they have taken it into their heads, in order to be happy, not to think of them at all.

Songs for me are like a message in a bottle. You send them out to the world, and maybe the person who you feel that way about will hear about it someday.

He that does good to another does good also to himself.

Chaos is inherent in all compounded things. Strive on with diligence.

The chief virtue that language can have is clearness, and nothing detracts from it so much as the use of unfamiliar words.

Everything is the product of one universal creative effort. There is nothing dead in Nature. Everything is organic and living, and therefore the whole world appears to be a living organism.

There is but one way for a president to deal with Congress, and that is continuously, incessantly, and without interruption. If it is really going to work, the relationship has got to be almost incestuous.

Of my mental cycles, I devote maybe ten percent to business thinking. Business isn’t that complicated. I wouldn’t want to put it on my business card.

I can honestly say, after talking about my mom passing away, I got the biggest weight off of my chest. Comedy is my therapy. That’s how I deal with my problems, my personal battles. I talk about it. I give it to my fans. When they laugh at it, it’s a release, for lack of a better word.

Error is always more busy than truth.

It should be possible to explain the laws of physics to a barmaid.

If you think in terms of a year, plant a seed; if in terms of ten years, plant trees; if in terms of 100 years, teach the people.

There is only one thing a philosopher can be relied upon to do, and that is to contradict other philosophers.

It is not funny that anything else should fall down; only that a man should fall down. Why do we laugh? Because it is a gravely religious matter: it is the Fall of Man. Only man can be absurd: for only man can be dignified.

What the devil is the point of surviving, going on living, when it’s a drag? But you see, that’s what people do.

Just as courage imperils life, fear protects it.

I’m not really good at fun-to-know, human interest stuff. We’re not ‚celebrities‘, whose life itself is a performance. Good or bad or ugly, we are our words. They’re what people meet.

Every existing thing is born without reason, prolongs itself out of weakness, and dies by chance.

I have found that no exertion of the legs can bring two minds much nearer to one another.

O wretched man, wretched not just because of what you are, but also because you do not know how wretched you are!

As the eagle was killed by the arrow winged with his own feather, so the hand of the world is wounded by its own skill.

Ask an older person you respect to tell you his or her greatest regret.

Morality is the herd-instinct in the individual.

Convictions are more dangerous foes of truth than lies.

Human language appears to be a unique phenomenon, without significant analogue in the animal world.

I just think you ought to talk straight with your people.

What is this world that is hastening me toward I know not what, viewing me with contempt?

There must always remain something that is antagonistic to good.

You have to be careful about how much you reveal to people that look up to you so much.

The Tao teaches us not to intervene and interfere. The things we love we have to learn to leave alone. And the people we love we have to learn to let them be.

The person who doesn’t scatter the morning dew will not comb gray hairs.

I let people fill in the blanks on their own. If they want to think about their ex, that’s fine. If they want to think about maybe who one of my exes is, then that’s fine. And it might not be right, because I’m the only one who knows what these songs are really about. It’s the one shred of privacy I have in the matter.

I have found that among its other benefits, giving liberates the soul of the giver.

When he speaks to you he speaks with an earnest vibe and an earnest energy.

If I err in belief that the souls of men are immortal, I gladly err, nor do I wish this error which gives me pleasure to be wrested from me while I live.

Ignorant men raise questions that wise men answered a thousand years ago.

Lo, what huge heaps of littleness around!

May be is very well, but Must is the master. It is my duty to show justice without recompense.

I don’t know how much longer I’ll be around. I’ll probably be writing when the Lord says, ‚Maya, Maya Angelou, it’s time.‘

I’m a strict, strict agnostic. It’s very different from a casual, ‚I don’t know.‘ It’s that you cannot present as knowledge something that is not knowledge. You can present it as faith, you can present it as belief, but you can’t present it as fact.

Death obsesses me, yes it does. I can’t really understand why it doesn’t obsess everyone – I think it does really, I’m just a little more out about it.

Noise proves nothing. Often a hen who has merely laid an egg cackles as if she laid an asteroid.

We can’t just choose to tell some facts and not others because we don’t want to upset people. We have to tell it like it is.

It is not when truth is dirty, but when it is shallow, that the lover of knowledge is reluctant to step into its waters.

The things hardest to bear are sweetest to remember.

I never went to school more than six months in my life, but I can say this: that among my earliest recollections, I remember how, when a mere child, I used to get irritated when anybody talked to me in a way I could not understand.

The golden rule is that there are no golden rules.

The more you stay in this kind of job, the more you realize that a public figure, a major public figure, is a lonely man.

Words are also actions, and actions are a kind of words.