We cannot learn men from books.

We boil at different degrees.

One of the lessons that I grew up with was to always stay true to yourself and never let what somebody else says distract you from your goals. And so when I hear about negative and false attacks, I really don’t invest any energy in them, because I know who I am.

I cannot always control what goes on outside. But I can always control what goes on inside.

Follow your honest convictions and be strong.

When I was young, an eccentric uncle decided to teach me how to lie. Not, he explained, because he wanted me to lie, but because he thought I should know how it’s done so I would recognise when I was being lied to.

Leave it as it is. The ages have been at work on it and man can only mar it.

Thoughts are fine when you don’t confuse them with who you are, and then thoughts are not a problem. Thinking is a wonderful tool to create things in this world. It only becomes problematic and a source of suffering when you confuse thinking with who you are.

Judge a man by his questions rather than his answers.

I’m one of the world’s most self-conscious people. I really have to struggle.

For a young person, it is almost a sin, or at least a danger, to be too preoccupied with himself; but for the ageing person, it is a duty and a necessity to devote serious attention to himself.

When you are offended at any man’s fault, turn to yourself and study your own failings. Then you will forget your anger.

These words dropped into my childish mind as if you should accidentally drop a ring into a deep well. I did not think of them much at the time, but there came a day in my life when the ring was fished up out of the well, good as new.

The most intense conflicts, if overcome, leave behind a sense of security and calm that is not easily disturbed. It is just these intense conflicts and their conflagration which are needed to produce valuable and lasting results.

What nourishes me also destroys me.

I had never been in charge of anything. I’d always worked for someone. I worked for a furniture warehouse. I did masonry. I always had a boss yelling at me. So I’d never been in charge of an organization.

The older I get, the better I understand that every day is a gift.

True knowledge exists in knowing that you know nothing.

You can fool all the people some of the time, and some of the people all the time, but you cannot fool all the people all the time.

It is a characteristic of wisdom not to do desperate things.

I haven’t been faithful to my own advice in the past. I will in the future.

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

Be not the first by whom the new are tried, Nor yet the last to lay the old aside.

The work is the work. The work is not me.

Character is power.

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.

In retrospect, I can see I couldn’t talk to people face to face, so I got on stage and started screaming and squealing and twitching about. Ha! Like, that sure made sense!

If I feel good about my parenting, I have no interest in judging other people’s choices. If I feel good about my body, I don’t go around making fun of other people’s weight or appearance. We’re hard on each other because we’re using each other as a launching pad out of our own perceived deficiency.

A man’s growth is seen in the successive choirs of his friends.

Half a truth is often a great lie.

All knowledge which ends in words will die as quickly as it came to life, with the exception of the written word: which is its mechanical part.

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

Man’s task is to become conscious of the contents that press upward from the unconscious.

You’re not going to say anything about me that I’m not going to say about myself. There’s so many things that I think about myself; if someone really wanted to get at me, they could say this and this and this. So I’m going to say it before they can. It’s the best policy for me.

I just have always felt that people don’t change, circumstances change.

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.

The roots of education are bitter, but the fruit is sweet.

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

I realize I don’t do a very good job in keeping up to date, but I try to.

If you realize all the time what’s kind of wonderful – that is, if we expand our experience into wilder and wilder regions of experience – every once in a while, we have these integrations when everything’s pulled together into a unification, in which it turns out to be simpler than it looked before.

Science is what you know, philosophy is what you don’t know.

What comes out when life squeezes you? When someone hurts or offends you? If anger, pain and fear come out of you, it’s because that’s what’s inside.

Our care should not be to have lived long as to have lived enough.

Those who govern, having much business on their hands, do not generally like to take the trouble of considering and carrying into execution new projects. The best public measures are therefore seldom adopted from previous wisdom, but forced by the occasion.

I never fall in love.

We should all be obliged to appear before a board every five years and justify our existence… on pain of liquidation.

I live in that solitude which is painful in youth, but delicious in the years of maturity.

Humor must not professedly teach and it must not professedly preach, but it must do both if it would live forever.

When I inspire myself, I want to spread the word because its important to be healthy. I don’t think they’re teaching us enough about that. I think we should eat better and exercise. Look who’s saying that – a guy who was 300 pounds – but I’m doing a lot better than I used to. I’m letting people know its important because it makes you feel better.

I’m still living at least five parallel lives, honestly! I wonder about it. I have no idea how that happens.

I’d rather learn from one bird how to sing than teach ten thousand stars how not to dance.

Any fool can make a rule, and any fool will mind it.

Mine is better than ours.

I don’t think I’m tangible to myself.

We should every night call ourselves to an account: what infirmity have I mastered today? what passions opposed? what temptation resisted? what virtue acquired? Our vices will abate of themselves if they be brought every day to the shrift.

I don’t have much positive to say about motor neuron disease, but it taught me not to pity myself because others were worse off, and to get on with what I still could do. I’m happier now than before I developed the condition.

It is best to love wisely, no doubt; but to love foolishly is better than not to be able to love at all.

O wise man! Give your wealth only to the worthy and never to others. The water of the sea received by the clouds is always sweet.

The virtue of justice consists in moderation, as regulated by wisdom.

As long as a man stands in his own way, everything seems to be in his way.

Life is a series of experiences, each one of which makes us bigger, even though sometimes it is hard to realize this. For the world was built to develop character, and we must learn that the setbacks and grieves which we endure help us in our marching onward.