To a profound pessimist about life, being in danger is not depressing.

Who is richer? The man who is seen, but cannot see? Or the man who is not being seen, but can see?

I believe that a scientist looking at nonscientific problems is just as dumb as the next guy.

I don’t want to make money, I just want to be wonderful.

A lost battle is a battle one thinks one has lost.

In this world there is always danger for those who are afraid of it.

It is impossible for you to be angry and laugh at the same time. Anger and laughter are mutually exclusive and you have the power to choose either.

When you’re born you get a ticket to the freak show. When you’re born in America, you get a front row seat.

Weak minds sink under prosperity as well as adversity; but strong and deep ones have two high tides.

In the fight between you and the world, back the world.

A life without adventure is likely to be unsatisfying, but a life in which adventure is allowed to take whatever form it will is sure to be short.

When I was a boy we didn’t wake up with Vietnam and have Cyprus for lunch and the Congo for dinner.

I left the woods for as good a reason as I went there. Perhaps it seemed to me that I had several more lives to live and could not spare any more time for that one.

The drama and the trauma of the relationship you have when you’re 16 can mirror the one you have when you’re 26. Life repeats itself.

When you see a rattlesnake poised to strike, you do not wait until he has struck to crush him.

Life’s like a play: it’s not the length, but the excellence of the acting that matters.

Life’s too short to hang out with people who aren’t resourceful.

You have to understand that people that are hurting are going to criticize.

The happiness of this life depends less on what befalls you than the way in which you take it.

Mind your speech a little lest you should mar your fortunes.

My whole life and my whole career, even through my music, I tell people: let’s unify; let’s show more love.

Bottom line is, I didn’t return to Apple to make a fortune. I’ve been very lucky in my life and already have one. When I was 25, my net worth was $100 million or so. I decided then that I wasn’t going to let it ruin my life. There’s no way you could ever spend it all, and I don’t view wealth as something that validates my intelligence.

My philosophy is: It’s none of my business what people say of me and think of me.

Reality is only a Rorschach ink-blot, you know.

While victimhood in America is exalted, I don’t think our veterans should join those ranks.

Courage is almost a contradiction in terms. It means a strong desire to live taking the form of readiness to die.

You must capture and keep the heart of the original and supremely able man before his brain can do its best.

Get your facts first, then you can distort them as you please.

Things in themselves have no life in them. A car can’t comfort or encourage you. A house means nothing if there’s no life and love inside.

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

Life is an adventure, it’s not a package tour.

Happiness is a ball after which we run wherever it rolls, and we push it with our feet when it stops.

Death is one moment, and life is so many of them.

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

Nature and books belong to the eyes that see them.

However my parents – both of whom came from impoverished backgrounds and neither of whom had been to college, took the view that my overactive imagination was an amusing quirk that would never pay a mortgage or secure a pension.

I should have no objection to go over the same life from its beginning to the end: requesting only the advantage authors have, of correcting in a second edition the faults of the first.

Older people sit down and ask, ‚What is it?‘ but the boy asks, ‚What can I do with it?‘.

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

Once you fully apprehend the vacuity of a life without struggle, you are equipped with the basic means of salvation.

Success is getting what you want. Happiness is wanting what you get.

Life is not accumulation, it is about contribution.

For me, writing has always come out of living a fairly to-the-bone kind of life, just really being present to a lot of life. The writing has been really a byproduct of that.

For time is the longest distance between two places.

The man who writes about himself and his own time is the only man who writes about all people and about all time.

I’m too busy acting like I’m not Naive. I’ve seen it all, I was here first.

Energy and persistence conquer all things.

I say luck is when an opportunity comes along and you’re prepared for it.

Let us train our minds to desire what the situation demands.

Forty is the old age of youth, fifty is the youth of old age.

Nothing fortifies scepticism more than the fact that there are some who are not sceptics; if all were so, they would be wrong.

So let’s be honest with ourselves and not take ourselves too serious, and never condemn the other fellow for doing what we are doing every day, only in a different way.

Great minds are related to the brief span of time during which they live as great buildings are to a little square in which they stand: you cannot see them in all their magnitude because you are standing too close to them.

The idea of going to school and getting a job is the most destructive one in your brain.

My friends ask me if I want more kids, and I always say yes, I want more; it’s the best thing you can have in your life.

I always like to look on the optimistic side of life, but I am realistic enough to know that life is a complex matter.

As is a tale, so is life: not how long it is, but how good it is, is what matters.

We all die, we all get sick, we all feel hunger and lust and pain, and therefore human life is consistent from one generation to the other. We all – most of us, anyway – want connections with other people and spend our lives looking for them.

The first man gets the oyster, the second man gets the shell.

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

There are definitely people who disagree with certain creative decisions you make. Pleasing everyone is pretty hard.