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

We are what we pretend to be, so we must be careful what we pretend to be.

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

Better a broken promise than none at all.

Few are those who see with their own eyes and feel with their own hearts.

I’m stupid, I’m ugly, I’m dumb, I smell. Did I mention I’m stupid?

Only the shallow know themselves.

I’ve laid my friends bare.

I don’t ever want to be caught up in a system of thinking I can do one thing ‚cos that’s just… that’s just telling yourself a lie.

Always make those above you feel comfortably superior. In your desire to please or impress them, do not go too far in displaying your talents or you might accomplish the opposite – inspire fear and insecurity.

If you’re losing your soul and you know it, then you’ve still got a soul left to lose.

You have to listen very carefully and tell the truth if you are going to get a paranoid person to open up to you.

Anyone who doesn’t take truth seriously in small matters cannot be trusted in large ones either.

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.

We are just an advanced breed of monkeys on a minor planet of a very average star. But we can understand the Universe. That makes us something very special.

How can sincerity be a condition of friendship? A taste for truth at any cost is a passion which spares nothing.

Before you try to keep up with the Joneses, be sure they’re not trying to keep up with you.

A fool thinks himself to be wise, but a wise man knows himself to be a fool.

I never even thought of myself as deadpan until someone wrote an article about me about a year after I was doing comedy. There was a paper called the ‚Boston Phoenix,‘ and someone wrote a description of what I was doing and that’s where I first saw ‚deadpan.‘

Something unpleasant is coming when men are anxious to tell the truth.

Showing off is the fool’s idea of glory.

Somebody’s boring me. I think it’s me.

In assisting his ‚neighbour‘ every day to the best of his ability, and keeping truth, honesty, and kindness perpetually before him, the Boy Scout, with as little formality as possible, is pleasing God.

Natural abilities can almost compensate for the want of every kind of cultivation, but no cultivation of the mind can make up for the want of natural abilities.

Many people identify their sense of self with the problems they have, or think they have.

The man who is aware of himself is henceforward independent; and he is never bored, and life is only too short, and he is steeped through and through with a profound yet temperate happiness.

No man is hurt but by himself.

Do not be very upright in your dealings for you would see by going to the forest that straight trees are cut down while crooked ones are left standing.

Trying to define yourself is like trying to bite your own teeth.

Weak character will neutralize all of the other possible good qualities a person might possess.

I don’t think I get that upset over things.

Who can exhaust a man? Who knows a man’s resources?

Children’s talent to endure stems from their ignorance of alternatives.

The greatest of faults, I should say, is to be conscious of none.

None but ourselves can free our minds.

Testing oneself is best when done alone.

Experience, as a desire for experience, does not come off. We must not study ourselves while having an experience.

Lying is not only saying what isn’t true. It is also, in fact especially, saying more than is true and, in the case of the human heart, saying more than one feels. We all do it, every day, to make life simpler.

Corruption is a cancer: a cancer that eats away at a citizen’s faith in democracy, diminishes the instinct for innovation and creativity; already-tight national budgets, crowding out important national investments. It wastes the talent of entire generations. It scares away investments and jobs.

Modesty forbids what the law does not.

When I grew up, the Devil was a reason why I had a headache or the Devil was the reason I got mad today. We always blamed the Devil. I think today when I say the Enemy, I like to make it broader. Sometimes the Enemy can be our own thoughts.

To observations which ourselves we make, we grow more partial for th‘ observer’s sake.

I am being frank about myself in this book. I tell of my first mistake on page 850.

No man should escape our universities without knowing how little he knows.

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?

People don’t want to hear about me having leather walls or gold toilets.

The fact that you are willing to say, ‚I do not understand, and it is fine,‘ is the greatest understanding you could exhibit.

Basically, I’m one of the greatest producers ever. And I’m also one of the greatest DJs ever. And I’m also one of the best executives ever.

One ought to hold on to one’s heart; for if one lets it go, one soon loses control of the head too.

Almost everybody is born a genius and buried an idiot.

I’ve learned people are watching, so don’t do nothing stupid.

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.

The big question about how people behave is whether they’ve got an Inner Scorecard or an Outer Scorecard. It helps if you can be satisfied with an Inner Scorecard.

There’s nothing you can know that isn’t known.

Someone said to me, ‚If fifty percent of the experts in Hollywood said you had no talent and should give up, what would you do?‘ My answer was then and still is, ‚If a hundred percent told me that, all one hundred percent would be wrong.‘

The real truths of life are never entirely new to you or to anybody because there is a level deep down within you where you already know all the things, all those spiritual truths that you read or hear, and then recognize them. I say ‚recognize‘ because you’re not… it’s not new.

I don’t consider myself an intellectual. And this is not one of my aims. But I admire intellectual people.

Never be lucid, never state, if you would be regarded great.

Who had deceived thee so often as thyself?

It’s better to be unhappy alone than unhappy with someone – so far.

We run carelessly to the precipice, after we have put something before us to prevent us seeing it.