To know oneself, one should assert oneself.

I’ve learned over the years that when I go to that place of passion within me, there’s no force in the universe that can interfere with my completing a project.

Choose silence of all virtues, for by it you hear other men’s imperfections, and conceal your own.

You can’t go backward in life.

Almost all of our sorrows spring out of our relations with other people.

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

If you sit there and have that mentality of ‚triple down on what you’re good at,‘ you’re never going to grow. You’re always going to stay the same.

Why am I a star? It can’t be because of looks.

I think we have to own the fears that we have of each other, and then, in some practical way, some daily way, figure out how to see people differently than the way we were brought up to.

Beware of the man who does not return your blow: he neither forgives you nor allows you to forgive yourself.

What you are comes to you.

Avoid popularity if you would have peace.

In the beginning, I was very insecure. I hated how I looked in pictures.

I’m about being the best.

Life doesn’t require that we be the best, only that we try our best.

The competitor to be feared is one who never bothers about you at all, but goes on making his own business better all the time.

If there are people you haven’t forgiven, you’re not going to really awaken. You have to let go.

Telling us to obey instinct is like telling us to obey ‚people.‘ People say different things: so do instincts. Our instincts are at war… Each instinct, if you listen to it, will claim to be gratified at the expense of the rest.

No one knows Anne’s better side, and that’s why most people can’t stand me. Oh, I can be an amusing clown for an afternoon, but after that, everyone’s had enough of me to last a month.

Our whole life is set up in the path of least resistance. We don’t want to suffer. We don’t want to feel discomfort. So the whole time, we’re living our lives in a very comfortable area. There’s no growth in that.

I have a dogmatic certainty: God is in every person’s life. God is in everyone’s life. Even if the life of a person has been a disaster, even if it is destroyed by vices, drugs or anything else – God is in this person’s life. You can – you must – try to seek God in every human life.

For me, I don’t want to cheat the game by saying, or kind of doing lip service by saying, I want to be the greatest ever. I want to be able to show it.

A book should serve as the ax for the frozen sea within us.

My body is quite tiny, but a lot of the emotions I feel are pretty explosive. They have to come out.

Only the really plain people know about love – the very fascinating ones try so hard to create an impression that they soon exhaust their talents.

Man can alter his life by altering his thinking.

I resigned from the Marine Corps and flying in 1974, even though I loved them both. I quit because I no longer wanted to fight for peace. Instead, I believe we can build a more sustainable peace by working for prosperity.

You may not control all the events that happen to you, but you can decide not to be reduced by them.

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

I always have a full-length mirror next to the camera when I’m doing publicity stills. That way, I know how I look.

I think I mainly climb mountains because I get a great deal of enjoyment out of it. I never attempt to analyze these things too thoroughly, but I think that all mountaineers do get a great deal of satisfaction out of overcoming some challenge which they think is very difficult for them, or which perhaps may be a little dangerous.

It’s better to be unhappy alone than unhappy with someone – so far.

I was in a terrible mess in my childhood.

I always believed that when you follow your heart or your gut, when you really follow the things that feel great to you, you can never lose, because settling is the worst feeling in the world.

Teach me to feel another’s woe, to hide the fault I see, that mercy I to others show, that mercy show to me.

We are long before we are convinced that happiness is never to be found, and each believes it possessed by others, to keep alive the hope of obtaining it for himself.

I want to rethink ‚surrender‘ as an active verb.

While you’re saving your face, you’re losing your ass.

The roots of the problems we face in the world, in our national life, and in our family and personal lives are spiritual.

I think I have a dualistic nature.

When you are young you tend to do so many things that are not needed. When you get experience, you know what exactly what works for you and you tend to do things that you want.

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.

Take advantage of every opportunity to practice your communication skills so that when important occasions arise, you will have the gift, the style, the sharpness, the clarity, and the emotions to affect other people.

The greatest and most important problems of life are all fundamentally insoluble. They can never be solved but only outgrown.

Weak character will neutralize all of the other possible good qualities a person might possess.

A wise man should consider that health is the greatest of human blessings, and learn how by his own thought to derive benefit from his illnesses.

The only real security that a man can have in this world is a reserve of knowledge, experience and ability.

True knowledge exists in knowing that you know nothing.

When I was younger, I felt pressure to become someone else once I became successful.

Everybody has talent, it’s just a matter of moving around until you’ve discovered what it is.

If you choose to do something, attack it. You can hate me, but there’s one thing you can’t say about me – that I didn’t attack it.

Always make those above you feel comfortably superior. In your desire to please or impress them, do not go too far in displaying your talents or you might accomplish the opposite – inspire fear and insecurity.

I have brought myself, by long meditation, to the conviction that a human being with a settled purpose must accomplish it, and that nothing can resist a will which will stake even existence upon its fulfillment.

I can’t pretend that I’m brave and that I can beat the whole world.

‚Trilogy‘ was more of a claustrophobic body of work. Before it was released, I hadn’t left my city for 21 years, and I had never been on a plane, not once. I spent my entire life on one setting; that’s probably why pieces of the album feel like one long track, because that’s what my life felt like. It felt like one long song.

It’s hard to be clear about who you are when you are carrying around a bunch of baggage from the past. I’ve learned to let go and move more quickly into the next place.

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.

Our personal intelligence is everlasting and divine.

You have to accept whatever comes and the only important thing is that you meet it with courage and with the best that you have to give.

You know how advice is. You only want it if it agrees with what you wanted to do anyway.

You don’t have to be like everybody else or do things like everybody else. God created you to be a unique individual, and He wants you to be free to be who He made you to be.