When you’re 40, you can’t ride the fence anymore. You gotta make definite decisions about your life.

It is a clear gain to sacrifice pleasure in order to avoid pain.

I don’t have any regrets. I made all my own decisions.

I sometimes have a tendency to walk on the dark side.

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.

If evil be spoken of you and it be true, correct yourself, if it be a lie, laugh at it.

Telling us to obey instinct is like telling us to obey ‚people.‘ People say different things: so do instincts. Our instincts are at war… Each instinct, if you listen to it, will claim to be gratified at the expense of the rest.

I write for myself things that I’ve gone through.

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.

One aspect of appellate judging is we have to give reasons for all of our decisions. And when you sit down and try to write it out, sometimes you find that your first judgment wasn’t the right one.

For my career, I wouldn’t go racing if I didn’t enjoy it. I still need to have my say, and not just get put with a team and get told to deal with it.

Cowardice asks the question, is it safe? Expediency asks the question, is it politic? Vanity asks the question, is it popular? But conscience asks the question, is it right? And there comes a time when one must take a position that is neither safe, nor politic, nor popular, but one must take it because it is right.

We do need women in civic life. We do need women to run for office, to be in political office. We need a feminist to be at the table when decisions are being made so that the right decisions will be made.

We don’t believe in planners and deciders making the decisions on behalf of Americans.

The questions which one asks oneself begin, at least, to illuminate the world, and become one’s key to the experience of others.

I don’t think I’m tangible to myself.

When you are winning a war almost everything that happens can be claimed to be right and wise.

When I was married, I definitely went through a lying period.

When making your choice in life, do not neglect to live.

The men who have succeeded are men who have chosen one line and stuck to it.

Every mind must make its choice between truth and repose. It cannot have both.

Every man must do two things alone; he must do his own believing and his own dying.

I think that I am better than the people who are trying to reform me.

It were a real increase of human happiness, could all young men from the age of nineteen be covered under barrels, or rendered otherwise invisible; and there left to follow their lawful studies and callings, till they emerged, sadder and wiser, at the age of twenty-five.

A child-like man is not a man whose development has been arrested; on the contrary, he is a man who has given himself a chance of continuing to develop long after most adults have muffled themselves in the cocoon of middle-aged habit and convention.

The Public is merely a multiplied ‚me.‘

If man made himself the first object of study, he would see how incapable he is of going further. How can a part know the whole?

Will not a tiny speck very close to our vision blot out the glory of the world, and leave only a margin by which we see the blot? I know no speck so troublesome as self.

I’m working on my life story. I’m not decided if it’s going to be a musical or a movie with music in it.

High office teaches decision making, not substance. It consumes intellectual capital; it does not create it. Most high officials leave office with the perceptions and insights with which they entered; they learn how to make decisions but not what decisions to make.

The older I get, the more important the eternal becomes to me personally.

Your philosophy determines whether you will go for the disciplines or continue the errors.

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.

The effect of liberty to individuals is that they may do what they please: we ought to see what it will please them to do, before we risk congratulations.

A leader who doesn’t hesitate before he sends his nation into battle is not fit to be a leader.

There were the questions of what kind of First Lady I would be, what issues would I focus on. Those were the questions that were being pounded on me through the campaign. A lot of times, I wondered what in the world Barack was even getting us into.

Always first draw fresh breath after outbursts of vanity and complacency.

Most gods throw dice, but Fate plays chess, and you don’t find out til too late that he’s been playing with two queens all along.

Let it be your constant method to look into the design of people’s actions, and see what they would be at, as often as it is practicable; and to make this custom the more significant, practice it first upon yourself.

It suddenly struck me that that tiny pea, pretty and blue, was the Earth. I put up my thumb and shut one eye, and my thumb blotted out the planet Earth. I didn’t feel like a giant. I felt very, very small.

My father wasn’t around when I was a kid, and I used to always say, ‚Why me? Why don’t I have a father? Why isn’t he around? Why did he leave my mother?‘ But as I got older I looked deeper and thought, ‚I don’t know what my father was going through, but if he was around all the time, would I be who I am today?‘

I’ve been to those places where it’s ‚poor, pitiful me.‘

Humanity, you never had it to begin with.

In countries where innocent people are dying, the leaders are following their blood rather than their brains.

When in doubt tell the truth.

If I wasn’t Bob Dylan, I’d probably think that Bob Dylan has a lot of answers myself.

Sometimes, indeed, there is such a discrepancy between the genius and his human qualities that one has to ask oneself whether a little less talent might not have been better.

The value of beauty and inspiration is very much underrated, no question. But I want to be clear: I’m not trying to be anyone’s savior. I’m just trying to think about the future and not be sad.

Whatever you have, you must either use or lose.

When you are young you tend to do so many things that are not needed. When you get experience, you know what exactly what works for you and you tend to do things that you want.

Great leaders are almost always great simplifiers, who can cut through argument, debate and doubt, to offer a solution everybody can understand.

For an author, the nice characters aren’t much fun. What you want are the screwed up characters. You know, the characters that are constantly wondering if what they are doing is the right thing, characters that are not only screwed up but are self-tapping screws. They’re doing it for themselves.

Remembering what you’ve been through and how that has strengthened your mindset can lift you out of a negative brain loop and help you bypass those weak, one-second impulses to give in. Even if you’re feeling low and beat down by life right now, I guarantee you can think of a time or two when you overcame odds and tasted success.

In the business world, the rearview mirror is always clearer than the windshield.

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

Nothing is more difficult, and therefore more precious, than to be able to decide.

I still have mixed feelings about what growing up is – this thing that happens to everyone, so I’ve heard.

I wish I knew why I am so anguished.

In less than a hundred years, we have found a new way to think of ourselves. From sitting at the center of the universe, we now find ourselves orbiting an average-sized sun, which is just one of millions of stars in our own Milky Way galaxy.

Know that any and all thoughts that you have regarding your own skills, interests, and inclinations are valid. To reinforce the validity of your thoughts, keep them private. Tell yourself that they’re between you and God.

I was offered a job on Wall Street by my uncle. But I wanted to get out. Make-it-on-my-own kinda thing.