This is the first age that’s ever paid much attention to the future, which is a little ironic since we may not have one.

Your manuscript is both good and original; but the part that is good is not original, and the part that is original is not good.

The only difference between the saint and the sinner is that every saint has a past, and every sinner has a future.

Musicians are there in front of you, and the spectators sense their tension, which is not the case when you’re listening to a record. Your attention is more relaxed. The emotional aspect is more important in live music.

The postman wants an autograph. The cab driver wants a picture. The waitress wants a handshake. Everyone wants a piece of you.

The book salesman should be honored because he brings to our attention, as a rule, the very books we need most and neglect most.

Cruelty would be delicious if one could only find some sort of cruelty that didn’t really hurt.

If you see oppression of the poor, and justice and righteousness trampled in a country, do not be astounded.

Most humans are never fully present in the now, because unconsciously they believe that the next moment must be more important than this one. But then you miss your whole life, which is never not now.

Emotions are continually affecting our thought processes and decisions, below the level of our awareness. And the most common emotion of them all is the desire for pleasure and the avoidance of pain.

God not only plays dice, but also sometimes throws them where they cannot be seen.

If my future were determined just by my performance on a standardized test, I wouldn’t be here. I guarantee you that.

History will have to record that the greatest tragedy of this period of social transition was not the strident clamor of the bad people, but the appalling silence of the good people.

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

Youth cannot know how age thinks and feels. But old men are guilty if they forget what it was to be young.

For 25 years countless people have come to the U.N. climate conferences begging our world leaders to stop emissions and clearly that has not worked as emissions are continuing to rise. So I will not beg the world leaders to care for our future. I will instead let them know change is coming whether they like it or not.

We are ready for any unforeseen event that may or may not occur.

The past, like the future, is indefinite and exists only as a spectrum of possibilities.

Fortune brings in some boats that are not steered.

We are like boxers, one never knows how much longer one has.

The point about melody and beat and lyric is that they exist to engage you in a very particular way. They want to occupy your attention.

We are afraid to care too much, for fear that the other person does not care at all.

I always wonder when it was that I was embraced.

Once I knew only darkness and stillness… my life was without past or future… but a little word from the fingers of another fell into my hand that clutched at emptiness, and my heart leaped to the rapture of living.

I don’t know where I’m going from here, but I promise it won’t be boring.

The empires of the future are the empires of the mind.

Who will take responsibility for raising the next generation?

Nine men in ten are would be suicides.

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.

What we need to do is always lean into the future; when the world changes around you and when it changes against you – what used to be a tail wind is now a head wind – you have to lean into that and figure out what to do because complaining isn’t a strategy.

When I was young, an eccentric uncle decided to teach me how to lie. Not, he explained, because he wanted me to lie, but because he thought I should know how it’s done so I would recognise when I was being lied to.

I hate to mention age, but I come from an era when we weren’t consumed by technology and television.

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

Here comes 40. I’m feeling my age and I’ve ordered the Ferrari. I’m going to get the whole mid-life crisis package.

When the mind is empty, silent, when it is in a state of complete negation – which is not blankness, nor the opposite of being positive, but a totally different state in which all thought has ceased – only then is it possible for that which is unnameable to come into being.

Life’s short. Anything could happen, and it usually does, so there is no point in sitting around thinking about all the ifs, ands and buts.

When God sneezed, I didn’t know what to say.

My kind of composing is more like the work of a gardener. The gardener takes his seeds and scatters them, knowing what he is planting but not quite what will grow where and when – and he won’t necessarily be able to reproduce it again afterwards either.

AIDS itself is subject to incredible stigma.

I was seldom able to see an opportunity until it had ceased to be one.

I cannot discover that anyone knows enough to say definitely what is and what is not possible.

Man, wear your seat belts. That’s all I can tell everybody. You never know.

Real generosity toward the future lies in giving all to the present.

Back when I was in school, few people understood dyslexia and what to do for it. My teachers thought I was lazy and not very clever, and I got bored easily… thinking of all the things I could do once I left school. I couldn’t always follow what was going on.

I am the center of attention in my job every single day; the thought of a wedding to me is exhausting. Why would I put myself through that?

The future belongs to those who believe in the beauty of their dreams.

A mother defends herself with a heart filled with love before doing so with words. I wonder whether there is any love for the church in the hearts of those who pay so much attention to the scandals.

You can’t learn in school what the world is going to do next year.

I don’t try to describe the future. I try to prevent it.

I would like to see a future where artists think that they have a right to contemplate things like global warming.

Creativity is the key to success in the future, and primary education is where teachers can bring creativity in children at that level.

Younger people have greatest fears. Why is that? Because they don’t know the plot. They don’t know their own individual plot… they don’t know what’s going to happen to them.

Not knowing when the dawn will come I open every door.

Our problem right now is that we’re so specialized that if the lights go out, there are a huge number of people who are not going to know what to do. But within every dystopia there’s a little utopia.

I was always making my friends laugh, but I never wanted the attention of the whole classroom.

We know what we are, but know not what we may be.

What we have found in this country, and maybe we’re more aware of it now, is one problem that we’ve had, even in the best of times, and that is the people who are sleeping on the grates, the homeless, you might say, by choice.

Awareness of universals is called conceiving, and a universal of which we are aware is called a concept.

Only that day dawns to which we are awake.

Risk comes from not knowing what you’re doing.

I have been aware all the time that my peoples, spread far and wide throughout every continent and ocean in the world, were united to support me in the task to which I have now been dedicated with such solemnity.