Those who know me know I’m passionate about lists, and top of my list of priorities is my family. My wife Joan and I do not consider our legacy to our children to be wealth or fame but the opportunity to pursue happiness by following their own path.

Especially for those of us who lived in single cells, you had the time to sit down and think, and we discovered that sitting down just to think is one of the best ways of keeping yourself fresh and able, to be able to address the problems facing you, and you had the opportunity, also, of examining your past.

You can never really live anyone else’s life, not even your child’s. The influence you exert is through your own life, and what you’ve become yourself.

The major value in life is not what you get. The major value in life is what you become.

If I feel good about my parenting, I have no interest in judging other people’s choices. If I feel good about my body, I don’t go around making fun of other people’s weight or appearance. We’re hard on each other because we’re using each other as a launching pad out of our own perceived deficiency.

The day you stop doing the small things is the day you think you’re above everybody else.

My dream is to continue filming until my body tells me to stop.

True patriotism is better than the wrong kind of piety.

Maybe other people will try to limit me but I don’t limit myself.

In past generations, people would try to play younger than they really are. My trick is, I don’t try to play younger than I really am.

Nobody looks like they did when they were 20, so why not take advantage of the fact that you’re changing, emotionally as well as physically?

Men can only be happy when they do not assume that the object of life is happiness.

Association with human beings lures one into self-observation.

He that hath wife and children hath given hostages to fortune; for they are impediments to great enterprises, either of virtue or mischief.

The human race is a race of cowards; and I am not only marching in that procession but carrying a banner.

I have surrounded myself with very smart people.

There is nothing, Sir, too little for so little a creature as man. It is by studying little things that we attain the great art of having as little misery and as much happiness as possible.

Know then this truth, enough for man to know virtue alone is happiness below.

When I first went to places where people were suffering from war and persecution, I felt ashamed of my feelings of sadness. I could see more possibilities in my life.

To witness two lovers is a spectacle for the gods.

To do anything to a high level, it has to be total obsession.

I grew up with the sea, and poverty for me was sumptuous; then I lost the sea and found all luxuries gray and poverty unbearable.

More than anything else, I want the folks back at home to think right of me.

I never expected to be anybody important.

I do not think there is any thrill that can go through the human heart like that felt by the inventor as he sees some creation of the brain unfolding to success… such emotions make a man forget food, sleep, friends, love, everything.

The closest I ever came to getting married was just before I started singing. In fact, my first record saved my neck.

What we seek we shall find; what we flee from flees from us.

God cannot give us a happiness and peace apart from Himself, because it is not there. There is no such thing.

You cannot hope to sweep someone else away by the force of your writing until it has been done to you.

I never thought I’d have children; I never thought I’d be in love, I never thought I’d meet the right person. Having come from a broken home – you kind of accept that certain things feel like a fairy tale, and you just don’t look for them.

We have a choice about how we take what happens to us in our life and whether or not we allow it to turn us. We can become consumed by hate and darkness, or we’re able to regain our humanity somehow, or come to terms with things and learn something about ourselves.

I think my vice would be outdoing myself.

The fundamental defect of fathers, in our competitive society, is that they want their children to be a credit to them.

You’re not going to say anything about me that I’m not going to say about myself. There’s so many things that I think about myself; if someone really wanted to get at me, they could say this and this and this. So I’m going to say it before they can. It’s the best policy for me.

I give the children education.

I have thought a sufficient measure of civilization is the influence of good women.

God is more interested in your future and your relationships than you are.

Because my career is so important, I think I make a lot of – I wouldn’t call them sacrifices, but just concessions for my job. I love what I do, and I want to do it for a long time.

Solitude is independence.

Remember, always give your best. Never get discouraged. Never be petty. Always remember, others may hate you. But those who hate you don’t win unless you hate them. And then you destroy yourself.

Don’t wait to be successful at some future point. Have a successful relationship with the present moment and be fully present in whatever you are doing. That is success.

Happiness in intelligent people is the rarest thing I know.

Only if you have been in the deepest valley, can you ever know how magnificent it is to be on the highest mountain.

Unless we place our religion and our treasure in the same thing, religion will always be sacrificed.

We are what we think. All that we are arises with our thoughts. With our thoughts, we make the world.

A person will sometimes devote all his life to the development of one part of his body – the wishbone.

The fact that you are willing to say, ‚I do not understand, and it is fine,‘ is the greatest understanding you could exhibit.

Always have something beautiful in sight, even if it’s just a daisy in a jelly glass.

Honor thy error as a hidden intention.

I remember when my mother, Shyamala Harris, bought our first home. I was thirteen. She was so proud, and my sister and I were so excited. Millions of Americans know that feeling of walking through the front door of their own home for the first time – the feeling of reaching for opportunity and finding it.

I consider the fact that thousands of children die each day from starvation and a lack of medicine a crisis for humanity and a problem we must collectively attempt to solve.

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

I just know what is right and I want to do what is right.

Every man is a quotation from all his ancestors.

Whoever does not have a good father should procure one.

Don’t feel sorry for me.

These days, children can text on their cell phone all night long, and no one else is seeing that phone. You don’t know who is calling that child.

The young think that failure is the Siberian end of the line, banishment from all the living, and tend to do what I then did – which was to hide.

Going home helps the content.

I like being a writer.

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.