To live alone is the fate of all great souls.

The important work of moving the world forward does not wait to be done by perfect men.

Spiritual people don’t float around all day on clouds of glory; they live in the real world and deal with real issues in real ways.

My life is my argument.

People have so many hang-ups about how other people live their lives. People always want to keep you in a little box, or they need to label you and fix you in time and location.

One can be instructed in society, one is inspired only in solitude.

You know, you can make a small mistake in language or etiquette in Britain, or you could when I was younger, and really be made to feel it, and it’s the flick of a lash, but it would sting, and especially at school where there’s not much privacy, and so on. You could, yes, undoubtedly be made to feel crushed.

But sports carried me away from being in a gang, or being associated with drugs. Sports was my way out.

Who looks outside, dreams; who looks inside, awakes.

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

I have a terrifying long list of fears. Literally everything – diseases, spiders… and people getting tired of me.

Create a ladder of values and priorities in your life, reminding yourself of what really matters to you.

If anything is good for pounding humility into you permanently, it’s the restaurant business.

I mean, I never liked being told what to do. It’s one of the reasons I dropped out of school.

The former colonies, in Latin America in particular, have a better chance than ever before to overcome centuries of subjugation, violence and foreign intervention, which they have so far survived as dependencies with islands of luxury in a sea of misery.

When you put down the good things you ought to have done, and leave out the bad ones you did do well, that’s Memoirs.

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.

Don’t just read the easy stuff. You may be entertained by it, but you will never grow from it.

To avoid criticism, do nothing, say nothing, and be nothing.

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.

If I am no longer disturbed myself, I will deal less with disturbed people, but I don’t regret having concerned myself with them because I think most of us are disturbed.

Within us there is someone who knows everything, wills everything, does everything better than we ourselves.

I’m not looking for sympathy at all.

Don’t talk about what you have done or what you are going to do.

My experience has been that work is almost the best way to pull oneself out of the depths.

Honor thy error as a hidden intention.

Humility is to make a right estimate of one’s self.

I don’t kiss nobody’s butt.

A lot of people tell me a lot of things about my conduct, my game, my future… but I try to stay away from their words of wisdom. I don’t let it distract me. On the field, you will be facing the ball alone. If you fail, you will the only one to blame. So, you should be the one deciding for yourself.

The longer I live, the more I feel that true repose consists in ‚renouncing‘ one’s own self, by which I mean making up one’s mind to admit that there is no importance whatever in being ‚happy‘ or ‚unhappy‘ in the usual meaning of the words.

By taking responsibility for how you choose to respond to anything or anyone, you’re aligning yourself with the beautiful dance of life.

I don’t know how to live good. I only know how to suffer.

Education must provide the opportunities for self-fulfillment; it can at best provide a rich and challenging environment for the individual to explore, in his own way.

Man has two great spiritual needs. One is for forgiveness. The other is for goodness.

Why is it so hard for people to believe that white people are poor?! I wouldn’t say I lived in a ghetto; I’d say I lived in the ‚hood. The same friends I had back then are the same people on tour with me now.

Action may not bring happiness but there is no happiness without action.

The more I see the less I know for sure.

I learned long ago, never to wrestle with a pig. You get dirty, and besides, the pig likes it.

Why regret anything? Where does it get you to regret anything you’ve ever done in your life? It gets you nowhere. It’s a pathetic emotion that you can wallow in.

Someone told me something that stuck with me: ‚You have to envision your life, and then go backwards.‘ I’ve been living by that motto for a while, so I see where I need to be. Now I’m just backtracking and trying to get back up there.

As much as it might look like, to someone else, that I’m successful, I never feel like I’m anywhere. The further I go, I still feel equally further from my eventual goal. Because as I grow, I get more goals. I’m never content.

I’m just trying to be myself. I’m not trying to be anyone else.

Everybody should do at least two things each day that he hates to do, just for practice.

Your vision will become clear only when you can look into your own heart. Who looks outside, dreams; who looks inside, awakes.

No untroubled day has ever dawned for me.

All travel has its advantages. If the passenger visits better countries, he may learn to improve his own. And if fortune carries him to worse, he may learn to enjoy it.

Let the refining and improving of your own life keep you so busy that you have little time to criticize others.

Truthfully, without over-egging it, as I often do, the library and journalism, those things made me who I am.

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.

Calm mind brings inner strength and self-confidence, so that’s very important for good health.

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

Success is only meaningful and enjoyable if it feels like your own.

I like criticism. It makes you strong.

If you’re going to spend two years of your life on something, it has to matter to you; you have to be passionate about it.

I owe my solitude to other people.

It’s not what happens to you, but how you react to it that matters.

I didn’t try to copy my dad or fit into the pressure or the mold that everybody tried to make me fit into.

I became a journalist partly so that I wouldn’t ever have to rely on the press for my information.

Prison was the best thing that ever happened to me.

As for my own views, they’ve of course evolved over the years. This conception of ‚renouncing beliefs‘ is very odd, as if we’re in some kind of religious cult. I ‚renounce beliefs‘ practically every time I think about the topics or find out what someone else is thinking.

I’m not who people expect me to be. I’m not Henry Kissinger.