Whenever you find yourself on the side of the majority, it is time to pause and reflect.

My problem was my inability to spend much time at home. I thought my family was secure, so I went running around everyplace else. I guess I had more of an effect on other people’s kids than I did my own.

I’m sure like everyone else I’m not always the happiest if I don’t do a good job in quali or the race or whatever, so I think beating myself up sometimes makes me work harder.

So thoroughly and sincerely are we compelled to live, reverencing our life, and denying the possibility of change. This is the only way, we say; but there are as many ways as there can be drawn radii from one centre. All change is a miracle to contemplate; but it is a miracle which is taking place every instant.

The first thing which I can record concerning myself is, that I was born. These are wonderful words. This life, to which neither time nor eternity can bring diminution – this everlasting living soul, began. My mind loses itself in these depths.

It is a great shock at the age of five or six to find that in a world of Gary Coopers you are the Indian.

Most people would sooner die than think; in fact, they do so.

I feel like the way I was raised was to be able to see through all the titles in this world – from religion to race.

In my divorce, I stood up and said to my ex-wife, ‚Hey, I messed up. This had nothing to do with you. I didn’t understand what marriage was. I cheated. I was wrong. We couldn’t fix it; it got worse. I stepped away because I didn’t want it to get any worse. You’re the mother of my kids – I don’t want to hate you.‘

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.

A majority is always better than the best repartee.

Unless I am both capable of and willing to reopen the wound every time I write a song, if I choose to not look inside myself to write music, I’m really not worth being called an artist at all.

It’s only I have seen enough of it and the funny thing is now, I know that I’m skinny, because I know there are even smaller clothes in the store. I think I’m big, when I was big, I never thought about it.

Resistance to the organized mass can be effected only by the man who is as well organized in his individuality as the mass itself.

Living is like tearing through a museum. Not until later do you really start absorbing what you saw, thinking about it, looking it up in a book, and remembering – because you can’t take it in all at once.

The surest way to corrupt a youth is to instruct him to hold in higher esteem those who think alike than those who think differently.

No matter what your mission is, have some notion in your head. Forget the model, whether it’s government or nonprofit or profit. Ask yourself the more important question: Is my mission improving the world? Are you sure about it? Seek to disconfirm that all the time. And if you can, change your mission.

I think I could go away tomorrow. I’ve already accomplished something. It’s such a selfish business that sometimes I get sick of myself.

The fool wonders, the wise man asks.

The career of a sage is of two kinds: He is either honored by all in the world, Like a flower waving its head, Or else he disappears into the silent forest.

History will be kind to me for I intend to write it.

I don’t think I’m bad for people. If I did think I was bad for people, I would go back to driving a truck, and I really mean this.

I can never say ‚why‘ about anything I do. I suppose I can say ‚how‘ and ‚when‘ and ‚what.‘ But ‚why‘ is impenetrable to me.

People should make up their own mind about what they think of me.

I specifically did not read other First Ladies‘ books, because I didn’t want to be influenced by how they defined the role. I knew that I would have to find this role – very uniquely and specifically to me and who I was.

We can’t solve problems by using the same kind of thinking we used when we created them.

The most basic question is not what is best, but who shall decide what is best.

When you realize who you live for, and who’s important to please, a lot of people will actually start living. I am never going to get caught up in that. I’m gonna look back on my life and say that I enjoyed it – and I lived it for me.

In the course of my life, I have often had to eat my words, and I must confess that I have always found it a wholesome diet.

Our greatest evils flow from ourselves.

Rational discussion is useful only when there is a significant base of shared assumptions.

Don’t despair, not even over the fact that you don’t despair.

We view things not only from different sides, but with different eyes; we have no wish to find them alike.

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.

We cannot live being obsessed with what other people think about us. It’s impossible to live like that. Not even God managed to please the entire world.

A lot of times, I run a thought experiment: ‚If I were not at Facebook, what would I be doing to make the world more open?‘

I think I have a dualistic nature.

Personality is everything in art and poetry.

I am neither bitter nor cynical but I do wish there was less immaturity in political thinking.

When I say to you, there is nobody like me, and there never was, that is a statement I want every woman to feel and make about themselves.

It seems to me that if you or I must choose between two courses of thought or action, we should remember our dying and try so to live that our death brings no pleasure on the world.

A journey is a person in itself; no two are alike. And all plans, safeguards, policing, and coercion are fruitless. We find that after years of struggle that we do not take a trip; a trip takes us.

For me, one of the toughest things about Valentine’s Day is that it gets geared up as the day to profess your love. See, T-E-S-T – that’s a bad word that doesn’t go with L-O-V-E.

I think everyone’s inherently snobbish. Things that are very popular are not taken seriously, because the snobbish side of one says, ‚Well, if everyone likes it it can’t be that good.‘ Whereas if only I and a couple of other people like it, then it must be really something special.

I owe my solitude to other people.

If I am no longer disturbed myself, I will deal less with disturbed people, but I don’t regret having concerned myself with them because I think most of us are disturbed.

Issues are never simple. One thing I’m proud of is that very rarely will you hear me simplify the issues.

What did I owe the rest of the world? Nothing.

I like to take every day just searching my own heart, making sure that I’m on course, and I’m doing what God wants me to do. I’m real good with not looking to the critics and looking straight ahead.

I do not pretend to start with precise questions. I do not think you can start with anything precise. You have to achieve such precision as you can, as you go along.

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.

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?

Solitude is independence.

If there is anything that we wish to change in the child, we should first examine it and see whether it is not something that could better be changed in ourselves.

You should do what other people do, unless you have a very good reason not to.

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

To avoid criticism, do nothing, say nothing, and be nothing.

I’m a super-duper over-analyzer. You mix that with self-doubt and pressure, and that’s never healthy.

I made bad decisions. I’m not denying that I made bad decisions.

I never thought I would be such a family-oriented guy; I didn’t think that was part of my makeup. But somebody said that as you get older, you become the person you always should have been, and I feel that’s happening to me.

I have always marched to my own beat, and most frequently, it was inconsistent not only with my own immediate family, but with my culture as well.