We judge people in areas where we’re vulnerable to shame, especially picking folks who are doing worse than we’re doing.

You are only afraid if you are not in harmony with yourself. People are afraid because they have never owned up to themselves.

In the brute physical world, and the one encompassed by medicine, there are all too many things that could kill you, don’t kill you, and then leave you considerably weaker.

Pick the day. Enjoy it – to the hilt. The day as it comes. People as they come… The past, I think, has helped me appreciate the present – and I don’t want to spoil any of it by fretting about the future.

The components of anxiety, stress, fear, and anger do not exist independently of you in the world. They simply do not exist in the physical world, even though we talk about them as if they do.

Obama has succeeded in descending even below George W. Bush in approval in the Arab world. It’s minuscule, few percent.

The faults of the burglar are the qualities of the financier.

Even with all the advantages of retrospect, and a lot of witnesses dead and gone, you can’t make your life look as if you intended it or you were consistent. All you can show is how you dealt with various hands.

In the egoic state, your sense of self, your identity, is derived from your thinking mind – in other words, what your mind tells you about yourself: the storyline of you, the memories, the expectations, all the thoughts that go through your head continuously and the emotions that reflect those thoughts. All those things make up your sense of self.

Great and good are seldom the same man.

I think that, ah, I’m a very goofy sort of person in many ways.

A lot of people have it a lot worse than you do.

It is a fact that cannot be denied: the wickedness of others becomes our own wickedness because it kindles something evil in our own hearts.

I am not a particularly thick-skinned person.

The display of grief makes more demands than grief itself. How few men are sad in their own company.

To know oneself is to study oneself in action with another person.

It is possible to provide security against other ills, but as far as death is concerned, we men live in a city without walls.

Propaganda is amazing. People can be led to believe anything.

There seems to be some perverse human characteristic that likes to make easy things difficult.

The ego is only an illusion, but a very influential one. Letting the ego-illusion become your identity can prevent you from knowing your true self. Ego, the false idea of believing that you are what you have or what you do, is a backwards way of assessing and living life.

I’m super self-critical, which I think is good, because then I get exactly what I want. I’m critical of other people, too – I try not to be, though.

It is impossible to underrate human intelligence – beginning with one’s own.

What do you regard as most humane? To spare someone shame.

The man who can centre his thoughts and hopes upon something transcending self can find a certain peace in the ordinary troubles of life, which is impossible to the pure egoist.

I want to let you in on a little secret: I don’t always feel like I’m a success. That’s right. There are plenty of times when I feel like I’ve just totally messed up and failed to connect with the people I’m trying to communicate with.

I like actors very much, but to marry one would be like marrying your brother. You look too much alike in the mirror.

Men take only their needs into consideration – never their abilities.

What I can say is that all my characters are searching for their souls, because they are my mirrors. I’m someone who is constantly trying to understand my place in the world, and literature is the best way that I found in order to see myself.

In George Bush you get experience, and with me you get – The Future!

When you cease to exist, then who will you blame?

Never say anything about yourself you do not want to come true.

It disturbs me no more to find men base, unjust, or selfish than to see apes mischievous, wolves savage, or the vulture ravenous.

I’m not a god – I do bad things.

When a man asks himself what is meant by action he proves that he isn’t a man of action. Action is a lack of balance. In order to act you must be somewhat insane. A reasonably sensible man is satisfied with thinking.

I go on working for the same reason that a hen goes on laying eggs.

Well, I’m in my 60s now. I finally look it, I think. People until I was 60 would always say they thought I looked younger, which I think, without flattering myself, I did, but I think I certainly have, as George Orwell says people do after a certain age, the face they deserve.

If you do not tell the truth about yourself you cannot tell it about other people.

The human mind is our fundamental resource.

The people who are absent are the ideal; those who are present seem to be quite commonplace.

She said the object and color in the materials around us actually have a physical effect on us, on how we feel.

It seems like we wake up and it’s a race until you get to bed. It gets to you after a while and you think, ‚What the hell am I doing?‘

Pride is pleasure arising from a man’s thinking too highly of himself.

I’m an introvert somewhat. There could be a room full of people, I’ll go stand in the corner.

Sometimes when you make a film you can go away for three months and then come back and live your life. But this struck a much deeper chord. I don’t have the ability yet to speak about it in an objective.

I always try to do as much as I can do. I’m never a person that does not enough, because I’d regret not doing enough and think I probably could have done more. I probably go too far and have to reel myself back in, which works in some things, and other things it doesn’t work.

My life is mine to remember.

I really have no interest in myself.

Sometimes I feel my whole life has been one big rejection.

One of the things I did when I discovered this huge importance of being vulnerable is very happily moved away from the shame research, because that’s such a downer, and people hate that topic. It’s not that vulnerability is the upside, but it’s better than shame, I guess.

I used to worry about every little thing, trying to figure out every problem. Well, I realize now how foolish that was. I was no more in control of my life than the man on the moon.

If you would judge, understand.

It could be if I fight in front of one person or one million people. It’s still the same emotions.

A man is never more truthful than when he acknowledges himself a liar.

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

I think my vice would be outdoing myself.

I can’t pretend that I’m brave and that I can beat the whole world.

I think my worst problem is actually living in the moment and understanding everything that’s going on. I feel like I’m in my own bubble.

Constant exposure to dangers will breed contempt for them.

It is a most mortifying reflection for a man to consider what he has done, compared to what he might have done.

I guess I have always been deeply terrified to really be someone’s wife since I know from life one cannot love another, ever, really.

In general, pride is at the bottom of all great mistakes.