To enjoy freedom we have to control ourselves.

Peace comes from within. Do not seek it without.

Time is kind of an amazing thing because you can do so much with it. I think people underestimate time… I don’t want to just sit on my phone for hours.

I was brought up to believe that the worst thing you could do was ‚call attention to yourself,‘ or ‚think you were smart.‘ My mother was an exception to this rule and was punished by the early onset of Parkinson’s disease.

My life has been very full.

Every man is a consumer, and ought to be a producer. He is by constitution expensive, and needs to be rich.

‚Worry‘ is a word that I don’t allow myself to use.

When I let go of what I am, I become what I might be.

No one is free, even the birds are chained to the sky.

If I was to go to sleep before midnight, I would feel weird about myself, like I wasted a day. My most productive hours are between midnight and five.

No matter how full a reservoir of maxims one may possess, and no matter how good one’s sentiments may be, if one has not taken advantage of every concrete opportunity to act, one’s character may remain entirely unaffected for the better.

To rule children by force is the technique of Satan, not of the Savior.

A man is what he thinks about all day long.

If you have fear, you are bound by tradition, you follow some leader or guru. When you are bound by tradition, when you are afraid of your husband or your wife, you lose your dignity as an individual human being.

I think one’s feelings waste themselves in words; they ought all to be distilled into actions which bring results.

My one regret in life is that I am not someone else.

There are two ways of being happy: We must either diminish our wants or augment our means – either may do – the result is the same and it is for each man to decide for himself and to do that which happens to be easier.

My only fault is that I don’t realize how great I really am.

Only free men can negotiate. A prisoner cannot enter into contracts.

A career is born in public – talent in privacy.

If you don’t live your life, then who will?

How can I be useful, of what service can I be? There is something inside me, what can it be?

As a young kid, I really wanted to be rich.

There is a luxury in self-reproach. When we blame ourselves we feel no one else has a right to blame us.

I was set free because my greatest fear had been realized, and I still had a daughter who I adored, and I had an old typewriter and a big idea. And so rock bottom became a solid foundation on which I rebuilt my life.

If you’re embarrassed because you have some notion about how men are supposed to behave, and it doesn’t include weeping, then you have some personal work to do.

No driver is perfect.

I believe enlightenment or revelation comes in daily life. I look for joy, the peace of action. You need action. I’d have stopped writing years ago if it were for the money.

I don’t have freedom in the United States to go into a public school and preach the Gospel, nor is a student free in a public school to pray, or a teacher free to read the Bible publicly to the students. At the same time, we have a great degree of freedom for which I am grateful.

Many people, especially young people, would like to be more independent and on their own. But it is very difficult and they suffer from feelings of isolation. I think that is one reason why young readers support my work.

He who would learn to fly one day must first learn to stand and walk and run and climb and dance; one cannot fly into flying.

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

Freedom is never more than one generation away from extinction. We didn’t pass it to our children in the bloodstream. It must be fought for, protected, and handed on for them to do the same.

By having a reverence for life, we enter into a spiritual relation with the world By practicing reverence for life we become good, deep, and alive.

We seek peace, knowing that peace is the climate of freedom.

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.

I lived in a dictatorship in Brazil, and I was arrested three times. I felt in my flesh what it is to live under such a regime and experience deprivation of freedom.

If you want total security, go to prison. There you’re fed, clothed, given medical care and so on. The only thing lacking… is freedom.

I was raised to be independent.

Once we accept our limits, we go beyond them.

One always has time enough, if one will apply it well.

Control your own destiny! Control your own destiny!

It’s an offseason. These days are valuable for everybody.

I am invariably late for appointments – sometimes as much as two hours. I’ve tried to change my ways but the things that make me late are too strong, and too pleasing.

I’m the kind of person who needs to feel like everything happens for a reason. When you date a guy and it goes badly, that’s horrible. But if you can write a song about it, then it was worth it.

I don’t want to be something that just comes and goes.

These are the soul’s changes. I don’t believe in ageing. I believe in forever altering one’s aspect to the sun. Hence my optimism.

True liberal government is founded on the emancipation of men.

Make the most of yourself, for that is all there is of you.

Suffering by nature or chance never seems so painful as suffering inflicted on us by the arbitrary will of another.

There are some cases in which the sense of injury breeds not the will to inflict injuries and climb over them as a ladder, but a hatred of all injury.

Do not be too moral. You may cheat yourself out of much life so.

I’m going to use all my tools, my God-given ability, and make the best life I can with it.

Part of the issue of achievement is to be able to set realistic goals, but that’s one of the hardest things to do because you don’t always know exactly where you’re going, and you shouldn’t.

If we are not free, no one will respect us.

Our passions are like convulsion fits, which, though they make us stronger for a time, leave us the weaker ever after.

I was bullied as a boy – lots of kids are, but hopefully most of us get on with our lives and grow up.

Thanks to my reading, I have never been caught flat-footed by any situation, never at a loss for how any problem has been addressed… It doesn’t give me all the answers, but it lights what is often a dark path ahead.

For a person who grew up in the ’30s and ’40s in the segregated South, with so many doors closed without explanation to me, libraries and books said, ‚Here I am, read me.‘ Over time I have learned I am at my best around books.

Each success only buys an admission ticket to a more difficult problem.

The most important thing is to read as much as you can, like I did. It will give you an understanding of what makes good writing and it will enlarge your vocabulary.