We do not hate as long as we still attach a lesser value, but only when we attach an equal or a greater value.

Every man’s life ends the same way. It is only the details of how he lived and how he died that distinguish one man from another.

In too many communities, too many young men of color are left behind and seen only as objects of fear. Through initiatives like My Brother’s Keeper, I’m personally committed to changing both perception and reality.

The most pathetic person in the world is someone who has sight, but has no vision.

Movies are fun, but they are no cure for cancer.

I never did give anybody hell. I just told the truth and they thought it was hell.

I have been ever of opinion that revolutions are not to be evaded.

Our object in the construction of the state is the greatest happiness of the whole, and not that of any one class.

Being ‚contented‘ ought to mean in English, as it does in French, being pleased. Being content with an attic ought not to mean being unable to move from it and resigned to living in it; it ought to mean appreciating all there is in such a position.

Money can’t buy life.

If we help an educated man’s daughter to go to Cambridge are we not forcing her to think not about education but about war? – not how she can learn, but how she can fight in order that she might win the same advantages as her brothers?

Not to expose your true feelings to an adult seems to be instinctive from the age of seven or eight onwards.

Fame doesn’t fulfill you. It warms you a bit, but that warmth is temporary.

Well, Art is Art, isn’t it? Still, on the other hand, water is water. And east is east and west is west and if you take cranberries and stew them like applesauce they taste much more like prunes than rhubarb does. Now you tell me what you know.

I never admire another’s fortune so much that I became dissatisfied with my own.

To a guy like me, a laugh is full of information.

Fame will go by and, so long, I’ve had you, fame. If it goes by, I’ve always known it was fickle. So at least it’s something I experience, but that’s not where I live.

I listen to music that is of our time and I just get angry.

I think in defeat you grope for things that are happy, and it’s hard.

If a victory is told in detail, one can no longer distinguish it from a defeat.

As a musician and a songwriter, it is an act of the ego to believe that other people might be interested in your point of view. But it is usually an empathetic nature that gets you going in the first place.

It’s lack that gives us inspiration. It’s not fullness.

The greatest enemy of any one of our truths may be the rest of our truths.

When a man wants to murder a tiger he calls it sport; when a tiger wants to murder him he calls it ferocity.

Biographies are but the clothes and buttons of the man. The biography of the man himself cannot be written.

It is quality rather than quantity that matters.

Let every man be respected as an individual and no man idolized.

To correct a natural indifference I was placed half-way between misery and the sun. Misery kept me from believing that all was well under the sun, and the sun taught me that history wasn’t everything.

We all have two lives: an inner life and an outer life. Your inner life is your soul life, which includes your mind, will and emotions. Your outer life is your physical life. And while God cares about every detail of your life, He is more concerned with your inner life than your outer life.

He who looks the higher is the more highly distinguished, and turning over the great book of nature (which is the proper object of philosophy) is the way to elevate one’s gaze.

It behooves every man who values liberty of conscience for himself, to resist invasions of it in the case of others: or their case may, by change of circumstances, become his own.

We can be thankful to a friend for a few acres, or a little money; and yet for the freedom and command of the whole earth, and for the great benefits of our being, our life, health, and reason, we look upon ourselves as under no obligation.

Poverty must not be a bar to learning and learning must offer an escape from poverty.

Since it is difficult to join them together, it is safer to be feared than to be loved when one of the two must be lacking.

What I have is a malevolent curiosity. That’s what drives my need to write and what probably leads me to look at things a little askew. I do tend to take a different perspective from most people.

The rule is perfect: in all matters of opinion our adversaries are insane.

When I’m a director, I look at myself the actor as a completely different person. It’s somebody else up there, an actor playing a role. I keep myself out of it.

We are not angry with people we fear or respect, as long as we fear or respect them; you cannot be afraid of a person and also at the same time angry with him.

Justice and power must be brought together, so that whatever is just may be powerful, and whatever is powerful may be just.

It is not he who reviles or strikes you who insults you, but your opinion that these things are insulting.

Life would be tolerable but for its amusements.

Black Americans, no more than white Americans, they do not want more government programs which perpetuate dependency. They don’t want to be a colony in a nation.

Whether women are better than men I cannot say – but I can say they are certainly no worse.

If I write badly about blacks, homosexuals and women, it is because of these who I met were that. There are many ‚bads‘ – bad dogs, bad censorship; there are even ‚bad‘ white males. Only, when you write about ‚bad‘ white males, they don’t complain about it. And need I say that there are ‚good‘ blacks, ‚good‘ homosexuals and ‚good‘ women?

There’s a part of you – the born-again part, your spirit – that’s dead to sin. That’s why it bothers you now when you sin. The ‚wilderness‘ part of you – your soul – is your unrenewed mind, out-of-control emotions, and stubborn will.

Depression begins with disappointment. When disappointment festers in our soul, it leads to discouragement.

Machines are worshipped because they are beautiful and valued because they confer power; they are hated because they are hideous and loathed because they impose slavery.

Those who weep for the happy periods which they encounter in history acknowledge what they want; not the alleviation but the silencing of misery.

Hatred is inveterate anger.

I never gave anybody hell! I just told the truth and they thought it was hell.

From my perspective, I absolutely believe in a greater spiritual power, far greater than I am, from which I have derived strength in moments of sadness or fear. That’s what I believe, and it was very, very strong in the forest.

You can draw inspiration from anything. If you’re a good storyteller, you can take a dirty look somebody gives you, or if a guy you used to have flirtations with starts dating a new girl, or somebody you’re casually talking to says something that makes you so mad – you can create an entire scenario around that.

I know that there are millions of Americans who are content with their health care coverage – they like their plan and, most importantly, they value their relationship with their doctor.

The saddest thing I can imagine is to get used to luxury.

Friendship, like credit, is highest when it is not used.

Anyone who keeps the ability to see beauty never grows old.

I don’t spend a lot of time thinking about dying, but I like to think that I’ve – if it did occur – that I would die peacefully and not make too much of a fuss about it.

It is understanding that gives us an ability to have peace. When we understand the other fellow’s viewpoint, and he understands ours, then we can sit down and work out our differences.

The feeling of friendship is like that of being comfortably filled with roast beef; love, like being enlivened with champagne.

The truth is, in order to get things like universal health care and a revamped education system, then someone is going to have to give up a piece of their pie so that someone else can have more.

My own view is that every company requires a long-term view.