While I thought that I was learning how to live, I have been learning how to die.

I think any life can be interesting, any surroundings can be interesting. I don’t think I could have been so brave if I had been living in a town, competing with people on what can be called a generally higher cultural level.

Everything is political. I will never be a politician or even think political. Me just deal with life and nature. That is the greatest thing to me.

There is a tendency for things to right themselves.

Death and life have their determined appointments; riches and honors depend upon heaven.

The power of our thoughts may never be measured or appreciated, but it became obvious to me as a young boy that there was value and power in being aware of my thoughts and how I expressed myself.

We’re all insecure, aren’t we? I’m not walking around like I’m macho man or anything.

The important work of moving the world forward does not wait to be done by perfect men.

Men do not learn much from the lessons of history and that is the most important of all the lessons of history.

There is nothing noble in being superior to your fellow men. True nobility lies in being superior to your former self.

And no, we don’t know where it will lead. We just know there’s something much bigger than any of us here.

I have lived eighty years of life and know nothing for it, but to be resigned and tell myself that flies are born to be eaten by spiders and man to be devoured by sorrow.

When I was growing up, there was nobody in my family – not even my mother – who I could look to and be like, ‚I know you’ve never said anything homophobic.‘ So, you know, you worry about people in the business who you’ve heard talk that way. Some of my heroes coming up talk recklessly like that.

It didn’t even occur to me that I’m the last person in the world who should play salsa or Brazilian music.

Leadership and learning are indispensable to each other.

I hate books; they only teach us to talk about things we know nothing about.

The best way to find yourself is to lose yourself in the service of others.

First and foremost, we need to be the adults we want our children to be. We should watch our own gossiping and anger. We should model the kindness we want to see.

You have to accept whatever comes and the only important thing is that you meet it with courage and with the best that you have to give.

Everybody has talent, it’s just a matter of moving around until you’ve discovered what it is.

Education is the best friend. An educated person is respected everywhere. Education beats the beauty and the youth.

Life was always a matter of waiting for the right moment to act.

Experience is one thing you can’t get for nothing.

There are things which a man is afraid to tell even to himself, and every decent man has a number of such things stored away in his mind.

The world can criticize me, but l can always criticize it back.

The wise are instructed by reason, average minds by experience, the stupid by necessity and the brute by instinct.

Human beings, who are almost unique in having the ability to learn from the experience of others, are also remarkable for their apparent disinclination to do so.

Whenever I write a novel, I have a strong sense that I am doing something I was unable to do before. With each new work, I move up a step and discover something new inside me.

I’ve had a lot of success; I’ve had failures, so I learn from the failure.

All the knowledge I possess everyone else can acquire, but my heart is all my own.

I think Bible principles are principles for life.

I am never satisfied with myself and that is what keeps me going – I have no post-satisfaction.

You cannot create experience. You must undergo it.

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.

In war, you win or lose, live or die – and the difference is just an eyelash.

You know, most people really don’t know me.

Whoever fights monsters should see to it that in the process he does not become a monster. And if you gaze long enough into an abyss, the abyss will gaze back into you.

I worked out early on to give up things I couldn’t do well at all.

One of the huge imbalances in life is the disparity between your daily existence, with its routines and habits, and the dream you have within yourself of some extraordinarily satisfying way of living.

I feel like I have a job to do, like I constantly have to reinvent myself. The more I up the ante for myself, the better it is in the long run. I try to interact with my fans as much as possible. It’s good that the person I’m being onstage isn’t really an act. It’s really me.

Self-pity in its early stage is as snug as a feather mattress. Only when it hardens does it become uncomfortable.

I do not know what I may appear to the world; but to myself, I seem to have been only like a boy playing on the seashore, and diverting myself now and then in finding a smoother pebble or prettier shell than ordinary, while the great ocean of truth lay all undiscovered before me.

There’s something about being in front of a live audience that’s fun. It’s a really interesting, very electric, very alive, and intense experience, and you can’t get it anywhere else. And I’ve been doing it since I was 23, so it’s part of my being – it’s part of my fabric as a person.

I think we have to own the fears that we have of each other, and then, in some practical way, some daily way, figure out how to see people differently than the way we were brought up to.

Shall I tell you what the real evil is? To cringe to the things that are called evils, to surrender to them our freedom, in defiance of which we ought to face any suffering.

I’m selfish.

I just owe almost everything to my father and it’s passionately interesting for me that the things that I learned in a small town, in a very modest home, are just the things that I believe have won the election.

If I make a fool of myself, who cares? I’m not frightened by anyone’s perception of me.

I tell you, we are here on Earth to fart around, and don’t let anybody tell you different.

A man who is not afraid is not aggressive, a man who has no sense of fear of any kind is really a free, a peaceful man.

There’s a deceptive sin that can keep us from walking in love: pride. It’s deceptive because when you have pride, you’re usually too proud to admit it. I know this because I used to have teachings on pride and they didn’t sell well.

There’s a victory, and defeat; the first and best of victories, the lowest and worst of defeats which each man gains or sustains at the hands not of another, but of himself.

The truth is something that burns. It burns off dead wood. And people don’t like having the dead wood burnt off, often because they’re 95 percent dead wood.

Now I am older, I understand we have to accept who we are.

I hope not to define myself by suffering.

The world is very different now. For man holds in his mortal hands the power to abolish all forms of human poverty, and all forms of human life.

He who knows best knows how little he knows.

I had nothing growing up, but I always wanted to be ‚sexy,‘ even before I knew what the word was.

I grew up with the sea, and poverty for me was sumptuous; then I lost the sea and found all luxuries gray and poverty unbearable.

I think I’ve got wiser.

Intelligent people should learn from their experiences. With people on the street, the bad experience has beaten them.