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

As pessimistic as I am about the nature of human beings and our capacity for atrocity and malevolence and betrayal and laziness and inertia, and all those things, I think we can transcend all that and set things straight.

Whether you think that you can, or that you can’t, you are usually right.

A good thing to remember is somebody’s got it a lot worse than we do.

We should not say that one man’s hour is worth another man’s hour, but rather that one man during an hour is worth just as much as another man during an hour. Time is everything, man is nothing: he is at the most time’s carcass.

I think that all things, in their way, reflect heavenly truth, the imagination not least.

I’ve been fortunate to have had the life I had prior to Hollywood. I wasn’t starving; I was going to eat the next day.

I feel like the way I was raised was to be able to see through all the titles in this world – from religion to race.

Don’t be too timid and squeamish about your actions. All life is an experiment.

Children wish fathers looked but with their eyes; fathers that children with their judgment looked; and either may be wrong.

You have to feel confident. If you don’t, then you’re going to be hesitant and defensive, and there’ll be a lot of things working against you.

If you see everything from the point of view of women being victims in some way, you don’t see the wood for the trees. It is better to be a person than a woman.

The last act is bloody, however pleasant all the rest of the play is: a little earth is thrown at last upon our head, and that is the end forever.

You can’t depend on your eyes when your imagination is out of focus.

My whole life is a theater piece.

My father wasn’t around when I was a kid, and I used to always say, ‚Why me? Why don’t I have a father? Why isn’t he around? Why did he leave my mother?‘ But as I got older I looked deeper and thought, ‚I don’t know what my father was going through, but if he was around all the time, would I be who I am today?‘

The paradox of courage is that a man must be a little careless of his life even in order to keep it.

When you have kids, you see life through different eyes. You feel love more deeply and are maybe a little more compassionate. It’s inevitable that that would make its way into your songwriting.

We all live in a house on fire, no fire department to call; no way out, just the upstairs window to look out of while the fire burns the house down with us trapped, locked in it.

Happiness is a how; not a what. A talent, not an object.

Life could be wonderful if people would leave you alone.

One life is all we have and we live it as we believe in living it. But to sacrifice what you are and to live without belief, that is a fate more terrible than dying.

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.

Once you get into this great stream of history, you can’t get out.

Your life is like a play with several acts. Some of the characters who enter have short roles to play, others, much larger. Some are villains and others are good guys. But all of them are necessary; otherwise, they wouldn’t be in the play. Embrace them all, and move on to the next act.

Your living is determined not so much by what life brings to you as by the attitude you bring to life; not so much by what happens to you as by the way your mind looks at what happens.

No such thing as a man willing to be honest – that would be like a blind man willing to see.

It is the fight alone that pleases us, not the victory.

Three grand essentials to happiness in this life are something to do, something to love, and something to hope for.

When the negative thoughts come – and they will; they come to all of us – it’s not enough to just not dwell on it… You’ve got to replace it with a positive thought.

When I was young I thought that money was the most important thing in life; now that I am old I know that it is.

Never was anything great achieved without danger.

In one case out of a hundred a point is excessively discussed because it is obscure; in the ninety-nine remaining it is obscure because it is excessively discussed.

Art’s everything we hope life would be, a lot of times.

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

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.

There is no way to happiness – happiness is the way.

I can handle pain.

Actor’s life is very long.

Many people are alive but don’t touch the miracle of being alive.

The greatest gift is the ability to forget – to forget the bad things and focus on the good.

If a person gets his attitude toward money straight, it will help straighten out almost every other area in his life.

On the plus side, death is one of the few things that can be done as easily lying down .

Passions are the gales of life.

Many years ago, I concluded that a few hair shirts were part of the mental wardrobe of every man. The president differs from other men in that he has a more extensive wardrobe.

Whether happiness may come or not, one should try and prepare one’s self to do without it.

A pessimist sees the difficulty in every opportunity; an optimist sees the opportunity in every difficulty.

For this generation, ours, life is nuclear survival, liberty is human rights, the pursuit of happiness is a planet whose resources are devoted to the physical and spiritual nourishment of its inhabitants.

Everything is funny, as long as it’s happening to somebody else.

The only way to take sorrow out of death is to take love out of life.

Sometimes we look back and 10 years from now we think, ‚Boy, those were great old days.‘ Well, you know, we’re living in the good old days.

One who does not know when to die, does not know how to live.

I never get too high on my stardom or what I can do.

For every moment of triumph, for every instance of beauty, many souls must be trampled.

I don’t think anything about a personal legacy. I mean, those words would never come out of my mouth unless I just repeated them. Those things have never been important to me.

Facts do not speak for themselves. They speak for or against competing theories. Facts divorced from theories or visions are mere isolated curiosities.

A stair not worn hollow by footsteps is, regarded from its own point of view, only a boring something made of wood.

Needing to have things perfect is the surest way to immobilize yourself with frustration.

It is foolish and wrong to mourn the men who died. Rather we should thank God that such men lived.

To understand the heart and mind of a person, look not at what he has already achieved, but at what he aspires to.

I believe that when you think of the negative, and you get up discouraged – ‚There’s nothing good in my future‘ – I really believe it almost ties the hands of God. God works where there’s an attitude of faith. I believe faith is all about hope.