When you are young, you cannot imagine being disabled. You imagine you would conquer it somehow. As I’ve got older, I can imagine it; I can see how life narrows in. I feel compassion for my mother now.

My parents weren’t actors or studio executives.

Reading is equivalent to thinking with someone else’s head instead of with one’s own.

I refuse to feel guilty. I feel guilty about too much in my life but not about money. I went through periods when I had nothing, so somebody in my family has to get stinkin‘ wealthy.

I will never be an old man. To me, old age is always 15 years older than I am.

Every man is a quotation from all his ancestors.

Experience has shown, and a true philosophy will always show, that a vast, perhaps the larger portion of the truth arises from the seemingly irrelevant.

Like all great travellers, I have seen more than I remember, and remember more than I have seen.

For many men, the acquisition of wealth does not end their troubles, it only changes them.

I hate all sports as rabidly as a person who likes sports hates common sense.

My mother was very strong. Once, she picked up a coconut and smashed it against my father’s head. It taught me about women defending themselves and not collapsing in a heap.

I believe that the greatest gift you can give your family and the world is a healthy you.

An optimist is a person who sees a green light everywhere, while a pessimist sees only the red stoplight… the truly wise person is colorblind.

I don’t look at a man who’s expert in one area as a specialist. I look at him as a rookie in ten other areas.

That’s what I do this for, to secure my family’s future. I don’t care about anything else. I’m able to spoil people, and that’s the best thing.

The problem with having a sense of humor is often that people you use it on aren’t in a very good mood.

One day it will be over, and I don’t care.

Country radio is much more like a family than any other group of people that I’ve met.

I never lose sight of the fact that just being is fun.

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.

The ideal death, I think, is what was the ideal Victorian death, you know, with your grandchildren around you, a bit of sobbing. And you say goodbye to your loved ones, making certain that one of them has been left behind to look after the shop.

My parents are my backbone. Still are. They’re the only group that will support you if you score zero or you score 40.

If someone lies, well, you had a choice to trust that person or not. I think the way my father raised me, well, he trusted everybody. And that worked for him.

Our inquiring friends and neighbors not of our faith can also catch the wave. We encourage them to keep all that is good and true in their lives. And we invite them to receive more, especially the glorious truth that through God’s eternal plan, families can be together forever.

Kindness is in our power, even when fondness is not.

Nobody can ever make enough money for as many poor relatives as I’ve got. Somebody’s got a sick kid, or somebody needs an operation, somebody ain’t got this, somebody ain’t got that. Or to give the kids all a car when they graduate.

When a man fell into his anecdotage it was a sign for him to retire from the world.

Most people don’t grow up. It’s too damn difficult. What happens is most people get older. That’s the truth of it. They honor their credit cards, they find parking spaces, they marry, they have the nerve to have children, but they don’t grow up.

All my stepchildren carried the burden of my fame. Sometimes they would read terrible things about me, and I’d worry about whether it would hurt them. I would tell them: ‚Don’t hide these things from me. I’d rather you ask me these things straight out, and I’ll answer all your questions.‘

No such thing as a man willing to be honest – that would be like a blind man willing to see.

My father opened a restaurant. It’s so amazing… it’s so freaking delicious, but I’m telling you I gain five pounds every time I go in there.

You know, my sister sings, my brother plays drums in my band. My whole family is a bunch of musicians.

There are only two lasting bequests we can hope to give our children. One of these is roots, the other, wings.

I imagine I will be less involved in film and be focused more on family and foreign affairs.

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.

Each part of my life provided respite from the other and gave me a sense of proportion that classmates trained only on law studies lacked.

We think sometimes that poverty is only being hungry, naked and homeless. The poverty of being unwanted, unloved and uncared for is the greatest poverty. We must start in our own homes to remedy this kind of poverty.

I have found out in later years that we were very poor, but the glory of America is that we didn’t know it then.

Let your heart feel for the afflictions and distress of everyone, and let your hand give in proportion to your purse.

Neil Young is my hero, and such a great example. You know what that guy has been doing for the past 40 years? Making music. That’s what that guy does. Sometimes you pay attention, sometimes you don’t. Sometimes he hands it to you, sometimes he keeps it to himself. He’s a good man with a beautiful family and wonderful life.

My enthusiasm seems to cause my world to endlessly offer me cooperative, co-creating experiences. I’m willing and I’m eager, and not just about my writing – I feel the same way about staying in shape, enjoying my family, giving a lecture, or whatever it may be.

Although the big word on the left is ‚compassion,‘ the big agenda on the left is dependency.

It took Simone a long time to understand why people want Daddy’s autograph. I’d tell her, and my wife would tell her, too, ‚People see Daddy in the movies, and they are excited to meet him.‘ But she couldn’t really grasp it.

When you’re born you get a ticket to the freak show. When you’re born in America, you get a front row seat.

The way to see by Faith is to shut the Eye of Reason.

A friend should be a master at guessing and keeping still: you must not want to see everything.

My husband and I had to raise five of my younger brothers and sisters. They lived with us. We sent them to school.

What’s the use of happiness? It can’t buy you money.

Youth is wasted on the young.

There are worse things in life than death. Have you ever spent an evening with an insurance salesman?

I felt unhappy and trapped. If I left baseball, where could I go, what could I do to earn enough money to help my mother and to marry Rachel? The solution to my problem was only days away in the hands of a tough, shrewd, courageous man called Branch Rickey, the president of the Brooklyn Dodgers.

What people call impartiality may simply mean indifference, and what people call partiality may simply mean mental activity.

You know that your happiness and suffering depend on the happiness and suffering of others. That insight helps you not to do wrong things that will bring suffering to yourself and to other people.

So many people are looking at what’s wrong, and I try to encourage them to look at what’s right in their life. A lot of people have it a lot worse than you do.

Stay humble and be concerned for the less fortunate.

I’ve got two daughters. 9 years old and 6 years old. I am going to teach them first of all about values and morals. But if they make a mistake, I don’t want them punished with a baby.

Only God Himself fully appreciates the influence of a Christian mother in the molding of character in her children.

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 should not look down on our first ancestors.

Going home helps the content.

People who work for me know that family comes first. And I’m fortunate to have a family that is very supportive of the work I do, so I don’t have to live two separate lives.