To me, my house is always recreating what I lost in youth.

I’m not perfect.

I look at other people’s lives, and some people feel like they’re too old to play with toys. But I still go through the toy section at the store, ‚cause there were toys that I wanted when I was little that I couldn’t have. So I still get them.

Have you not learned that strength comes to an ordinary soul when given an extraordinary calling?

Billy Graham is one of my great lifetime heroes. I think he epitomizes the essence of what a Christian leader should be. I have participated in some of his crusades a couple of times in Atlanta. I’ve seen the profound impact he’s had on me personally, and on other people who were not Christians and accepted Christ as Savior.

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 just really believe people have to get hungry. I think maybe what we need to do, instead of trying to stuff our beliefs down people’s throats, is just pray for them to really be hungry and to see their neediness.

At home, we must reject the mistaken notion – a notion that has dominated too much of the public dialogue for too long – that ever bigger Government is the answer to every problem.

I’m not afraid to look like an idiot.

The way I approach this thing, when I started to get my head screwed on straight and really trying to make something of myself as an artist, when I was 19 or 20, it became more about function for me. Like, what is this song doing to you? What is the function of this type of artform? What is it doing?

Until you have cultivated the habit of saying some kind word of those whom you do not admire, you will be neither successful nor happy.

You can make more friends in two months by becoming interested in other people than you can in two years by trying to get other people interested in you.

There is such a thing as old emotional pain living inside you. It is an accumulation of painful life experience that was not fully faced and accepted in the moment it arose. It leaves behind an energy form of emotional pain.

The questions which one asks oneself begin, at least, to illuminate the world, and become one’s key to the experience of others.

Life isn’t about finding yourself. Life is about creating yourself.

If you young fellows were wise, the devil couldn’t do anything to you, but since you aren’t wise, you need us who are old.

The more one does and sees and feels, the more one is able to do, and the more genuine may be one’s appreciation of fundamental things like home, and love, and understanding companionship.

Life’s too short to deal with other people’s insecurities.

Peace is one of the most precious gifts God has promised His children. I know, because for many years my life was not peaceful, and I was miserable.

I don’t live in the past at all; I’m always wanting to do something new. I make a point of constantly trying to forget and get things out of my mind.

The highest reward for a person’s toil is not what they get for it, but what they become by it.

To do the same thing over and over again is not only boredom: it is to be controlled by rather than to control what you do.

I feel real good because it’s about representing the young world and how to uplift each other and how to push us to be greater and make sure we don’t fall or get trapped or get in trouble, you know what I mean. Stay focused, you know what I mean.

The only real failure in life is not to be true to the best one knows.

When we do the best that we can, we never know what miracle is wrought in our life, or in the life of another.

I still consider it a summer job, though. So, I try to maintain that summer job as long as I can. But it’s exciting to be able to have the opportunity to do things I always dreamed of as a kid.

Such as are your habitual thoughts, such also will be the character of your mind; for the soul is dyed by the thoughts.

It is our choices… that show what we truly are, far more than our abilities.

We’re all capable of mistakes, but I do not care to enlighten you on the mistakes we may or may not have made.

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

In so many ways, segregation shaped me, and education liberated me.

A man who is not afraid is not aggressive, a man who has no sense of fear of any kind is really a free, a peaceful man.

The greatest of faults, I should say, is to be conscious of none.

If you don’t like something, change it. If you can’t change it, change your attitude.

I still derive immense pleasure from remembering how many hod-carrying brickies were encouraged to put on lurex tights and mince up and down the high street, having been assured by know-it-alls like me that a smidgen of blusher really attracted the birds.

The thing to do, it seems to me, is to prepare yourself so you can be a rainbow in somebody else’s cloud. Somebody who may not look like you. May not call God the same name you call God – if they call God at all. I may not dance your dances or speak your language. But be a blessing to somebody. That’s what I think.

Vanity is the healthiest thing in life.

I do the very best I know how – the very best I can; and I mean to keep on doing so until the end.

It’s a philosophy of life. A practice. If you do this, something will change, what will change is that you will change, your life will change, and if you can change you, you can perhaps change the world.

I’m always cast in these strange men… that’s not me, really.

You can live your life angry, bitter, mad at somebody or even guilty, not letting go of your own mistakes, but you won’t receive the good things God has in store.

Adversity has ever been considered the state in which a man most easily becomes acquainted with himself.

You’re going to go through tough times – that’s life. But I say, ‚Nothing happens to you, it happens for you.‘ See the positive in negative events.

I like pushing boundaries.

The foundation of every state is the education of its youth.

Sometimes you need faith and victory spoken over your life. Words have created power. When you receive them into your spirit, they can ignite seeds of increase on the inside.

We have all had the experience of finding that our reactions and perhaps even our deeds have denied beliefs we thought were ours.

How to gain, how to keep, how to recover happiness is in fact for most men at all times the secret motive of all they do, and of all they are willing to endure.

I couldn’t ever go back home without being something. I probably would never have gone back home. That was definitely a big motivation. To get back home, and not empty-handed.

I think the healthy way to live is to make friends with the beast inside oneself, and that means not the beast but the shadow. The dark side of one’s nature. Have fun with it and you know, is to accept everything about ourselves.

I have never felt that the one thing that I am ‚known for‘ is what I am.

Delhi means everything to me. This city has given me everything, and I love it.

Back in the day, what motivated me was overcoming myself. Now I believe in being a leader. I’ve done it all – I’m good. Now, it’s about setting an example for others to follow. I can’t just talk it – I have to live it.

I don’t have emotional needs, only physical ones.

Because you know when you first become famous, you start walking a little different because people are staring at you.

The happiest people in the world are those who feel absolutely terrific about themselves, and this is the natural outgrowth of accepting total responsibility for every part of their life.

I’d like to be known for more than being the guy in the big suit.

Yeah, I like to keep myself interested – I’ll kind of throw myself into some area that I don’t completely know or understand, that I’m not adept at, so I’m forced to swim in order to stay afloat. There’s a good feeling that comes from that.

The best way to find yourself is to lose yourself in the service of others.

In the struggle between yourself and the world second the world.

The problem with me, as far as getting married and having a family, is that my comedy is so important to me. So I don’t know if I’ll ever be as good a dad as my dad.