With people of limited ability modesty is merely honesty. But with those who possess great talent it is hypocrisy.

People intoxicate themselves with work so they won’t see how they really are.

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.

Talent is cheaper than table salt. What separates the talented individual from the successful one is a lot of hard work.

All of my brothers and sisters are very talented. They all sang all right.

To know what you know and what you do not know, that is true knowledge.

None are more taken in by flattery than the proud, who wish to be the first and are not.

I wonder how many decisions we make every day. I believe it’s probably hundreds. We decide whether or not to get out of bed, what we’ll eat, what we’ll do, what we’ll think about, what we’ll say… and on and on.

Become aware of your own insufficiency.

I hear my friends and my mom tell me I’m special, but honestly, I still don’t get it.

As we advance in life we learn the limits of our abilities.

The only difference between me and a madman is that I’m not mad.

I don’t consider myself to be that credulous.

There’s been people who’ve rapped and produced – like Kanye – but I don’t feel like on the rapping side there’s ever been a producer who can rap as good as I think I can rap.

Let the path be open to talent.

Monsters are real, and ghosts are real too. They live inside us, and sometimes, they win.

You will not be punished for your anger, you will be punished by your anger.

To know, is to know that you know nothing. That is the meaning of true knowledge.

I am not a particularly thick-skinned person.

The line between failure and success is so fine that we scarcely know when we pass it: so fine that we are often on the line and do not know it.

There’s not a note of mine that’s worth the noting.

My fate cannot be mastered; it can only be collaborated with and thereby, to some extent, directed. Nor am I the captain of my soul; I am only its noisiest passenger.

If you live only in one culture for the first 20 years of your life, you become conditioned without knowing it.

We are what we think. All that we are arises with our thoughts. With our thoughts, we make the world.

What you are, you are by accident of birth; what I am, I am by myself. There are and will be a thousand princes; there is only one Beethoven.

Overall there’s going to be things I’m not great at.

For people who may think they know, or have snippets of who I am, you can attack that person. That’s part of being a public figure.

I want to be an honest man and a good writer.

Age is whatever you think it is. You are as old as you think you are.

I’ve never been reckless – it’s always calculated. I’m mischievous, but I’m calculated.

Remember you are just an extra in everyone else’s play.

To be nobody but yourself in a world which is doing its best, night and day, to make you everybody else – means to fight the hardest battle which any human being can fight; and never stop fighting.

We all want progress, but if you’re on the wrong road, progress means doing an about-turn and walking back to the right road; in that case, the man who turns back soonest is the most progressive.

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

The difficult thing is that vulnerability is the first thing I look for in you and the last thing I’m willing to show you. In you, it’s courage and daring. In me, it’s weakness.

What a waste it is to lose one’s mind. Or not to have a mind is being very wasteful. How true that is.

Listening has importance only when one is not projecting one’s own desires through which one listens.

Like all dreamers, I mistook disenchantment for truth.

Only the shallow know themselves.

When I first saw a picture of the crucifixion, I lost respect for my parents. I suddenly realised that this is what the adult world is like – full of cruelty and hypocrisy.

Modesty is a learned affectation. And as soon as life slams the modest person against the wall, that modesty drops.

There are only two kinds of men: the righteous who think they are sinners and the sinners who think they are righteous.

Everything that irritates us about others can lead us to an understanding of ourselves.

I want to thank God, obviously for the health, for the talent He’s given me, for my family who supports me, for the things that basketball’s taught me on and off the court. For the people that I’ve been able to meet through the game of basketball.

You’re always learning. The problem is, sometimes you stop and think you understand the world. This is not correct. The world is always moving. You never reach the point you can stop making an effort.

Many a man thinks he is patient when, in reality, he is indifferent.

Truth is the most valuable thing we have. Let us economize it.

I discovered me in the library. I went to find me in the library.

A great many people think they are thinking when they are merely rearranging their prejudices.

O, what a goodly outside falsehood hath!

That man is not truly brave who is afraid either to seem or to be, when it suits him, a coward.

Compared to what we ought to be, we are half awake.

The Artist is he who detects and applies the law from observation of the works of Genius, whether of man or Nature. The Artisan is he who merely applies the rules which others have detected.

Why lie? I’m not going to be a hypocrite and say the opposite of what I think, like some others do.

We must distinguish between speaking to deceive and being silent to be reserved.

There are phases in life which surface at times, and it makes you understand that despite you working hard, everything what you are doing is probably not enough. That’s when you need to look around, and beyond.

I meant what I said and I said what I meant.

The greatest enemy of any one of our truths may be the rest of our truths.

It has been my experience that folks who have no vices have very few virtues.

Once you begin to fall off the track and believe you breathe different air to everyone else, you’re doomed; you’re finished.

I know that I’m not the easiest person to live with. The challenge I put on myself is so great that the person I live with feels himself challenged. I bring a lot to bear, and I don’t know how not to.