We human beings are strange creatures and still reserve the right to think for ourselves.

It’s absolutely normal that different human beings want to go different ways.

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.

There’s a long way to fall when you pretend that you’re so far away from the earth, far away from reality, floating in a bubble that’s protected by fame or success. It’s scary, and it’s the thing I fear the most: to be swallowed up by that bubble. It can be poison to you, fame.

Anger is never without a reason, but seldom with a good one.

The faults of a superior person are like the sun and moon. They have their faults, and everyone sees them; they change and everyone looks up to them.

I think there is a sense of being forced at this time to look at America’s really large shadow and that’s not all that bad.

To put it bluntly, I seem to have a whole superstructure with no foundation. But I’m working on the foundation.

That man is not truly brave who is afraid either to seem or to be, when it suits him, a coward.

If you leave the smallest corner of your head vacant for a moment, other people’s opinions will rush in from all quarters.

When you are discontent, you always want more, more, more. Your desire can never be satisfied. But when you practice contentment, you can say to yourself, ‚Oh yes – I already have everything that I really need.‘

The object of life is not to be on the side of the majority, but to escape finding oneself in the ranks of the insane.

I never deny. I never contradict. I sometimes forget.

I think for my bones and my size, I better stay with my 60 kilo.

You can have no dominion greater or less than that over yourself.

As soon as man does not take his existence for granted, but beholds it as something unfathomably mysterious, thought begins.

And finally I twist my heart round again, so that the bad is on the outside and the good is on the inside, and keep on trying to find a way of becoming what I would so like to be, and could be, if there weren’t any other people living in the world.

A lot of people have said I’d have probably done better in my career if I hadn’t looked so cheap and gaudy. But I dress to be comfortable for me, and you shouldn’t be blamed because you want to look pretty.

We are all different. There is no such thing as a standard or run-of-the-mill human being, but we share the same human spirit.

I used to get the feeling, and sometimes I still get it, that sometimes I was fooling somebody; I don’t know who or what, maybe myself.

I put a lot of pressure on myself. I think something’s not good enough, and I won’t stop until I feel like I’ve made it. I’m never satisfied.

People look at the same passage, and one person will say this is the best thing he’s ever read, and another person will say it’s absolutely idiotic. I mean, there’s no way to reconcile those two things. You just have to forget the whole business of what people are saying.

One ought to hold on to one’s heart; for if one lets it go, one soon loses control of the head too.

A person’s a person, no matter how small.

And obviously, from our own personal point of view, the principal challenge is a personal challenge.

When I was fourteen and first started going out, I always wanted to be the opposite of everyone else. So I would go to the club in a polo T-shirt and pants and sneakers and a hat on backward, just so I would not be dressed like other girls.

There are few things more dreadful than dealing with a man who knows he is going under, in his own eyes, and in the eyes of others. Nothing can help that man. What is left of that man flees from what is left of human attention.

In a democracy, the well-being, individuality and happiness of every citizen is important for the overall prosperity, peace and happiness of the nation.

He who fights with monsters might take care lest he thereby become a monster. Is not life a hundred times too short for us to bore ourselves?

I can’t tell anybody else how to run their life or their business, but I really believe I’ve got a good bead on myself.

I tend to overthink things. I’m not the guy who screams ‚This is a world smash!‘ when I finish a song.

Knowledge of the self is the mother of all knowledge. So it is incumbent on me to know my self, to know it completely, to know its minutiae, its characteristics, its subtleties, and its very atoms.

You cannot see the changes that you’re dreaming about, because they’re internal.

Meditation is a state of mind which looks at everything with complete attention, totally, not just parts of it. And no one can teach you how to be attentive. If any system teaches you how to be attentive, then you are attentive to the system, and that is not attention.

We are what we think. All that we are arises with our thoughts. With our thoughts, we make the world.

I do all the evil I can before I learn to shun it? Is it not enough to know the evil to shun it? If not, we should be sincere enough to admit that we love evil too well to give it up.

Every man supposes himself not to be fully understood or appreciated.

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

When you look at the sun during your walking meditation, the mindfulness of the body helps you to see that the sun is in you; without the sun there is no life at all and suddenly you get in touch with the sun in a different way.

How do you know what it’s like to be stupid if you’ve never been smart?

The true artist is not proud: he unfortunately sees that art has no limits; he feels darkly how far he is from the goal, and though he may be admired by others, he is sad not to have reached that point to which his better genius only appears as a distant, guiding sun.

In one day, I have times where I’m feeling great, I feel like I love my life, and then 2:30 rolls around and I’m the angriest man alive. My wife sees it.

I am easily satisfied with the very best.

I more fear what is within me than what comes from without.

You may be always victorious if you will never enter into any contest where the issue does not wholly depend upon yourself.

I like working. That’s when I’m feeling my best. And the people around me know that. My wife knows that.

Only the shallow know themselves.

We are dying from overthinking. We are slowly killing ourselves by thinking about everything. Think. Think. Think. You can never trust the human mind anyway. It’s a death trap.

I’ve always done whatever I want and always been exactly who I am.

He who knows others is wise. He who knows himself is enlightened.

I don’t like to give advice. I like to give people information because everyone’s life is different, and everyone’s journey is different.

With mindfulness, you can establish yourself in the present in order to touch the wonders of life that are available in that moment.

It is in the admission of ignorance and the admission of uncertainty that there is a hope for the continuous motion of human beings in some direction that doesn’t get confined, permanently blocked, as it has so many times before in various periods in the history of man.

I’m not convinced that women have the education or the sense of their own history enough or that they understand the cruelty of which men are capable and the delight that many men will take in seeing you choose to chain yourself – then they get to say ‚See, you did it yourself.‘

I know nothing except the fact of my ignorance.

Think for yourselves and let others enjoy the privilege to do so, too.

On the whole, human beings want to be good, but not too good, and not quite all the time.

No man should escape our universities without knowing how little he knows.

The ‚soul‘ is one of the words you can use to talk about your innermost being, the essence of who you are.

The fact is, I was never too bright in school. I ain’t ashamed of it, though. I mean, how much do school principals make a month?

He who falls in love with himself will have no rivals.