Would that I were a dry well, and that the people tossed stones into me, for that would be easier than to be a spring of flowing water that the thirsty pass by, and from which they avoid drinking.

I still think like a Marxist in many ways.

We are all born for love. It is the principle of existence, and its only end.

My philosophy is, it’s always very rewarding when you can make an audience laugh. I don’t mind making fun of myself. I like self-deprecating comedy. But I’d like you to laugh with me occasionally, too.

Fame is like a river, that beareth up things light and swollen, and drowns things weighty and solid.

I love playing ego and insecurity combined.

It’s not worth doing something unless you were doing something that someone, somewere, would much rather you weren’t doing.

More gold has been mined from the thoughts of men than has been taken from the earth.

All wrong-doing arises because of mind. If mind is transformed can wrong-doing remain?

What then do you call your soul? What idea have you of it? You cannot of yourselves, without revelation, admit the existence within you of anything but a power unknown to you of feeling and thinking.

As a leader, the first person I need to lead is me. The first person that I should try to change is me.

If I went back to my 20-year-old self, what I would tell my 20-year-old self is, ‚You don’t know anything.‘ Because everyone, when they’re young, they think they know what’s going on in the world, and you don’t.

Is it not strange that desire should so many years outlive performance?

Confession of errors is like a broom which sweeps away the dirt and leaves the surface brighter and clearer. I feel stronger for confession.

I woke up one day and thought: ‚I want to write a book about the history of my body.‘ I could justify talking about my mother because it was in her body that my body began.

I feel like I just grabbed a big juicy worm with a right sharp hook in the middle of it.

An overflow of good converts to bad.

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

A clear conscience is usually the sign of a bad memory.

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

The well bred contradict other people. The wise contradict themselves.

I’ve always felt like there was a lot of hype around me even when there wasn’t. I felt like everyone was talking about me even when no one was talking about me.

Freedom without limits is just a word.

We do not learn; and what we call learning is only a process of recollection.

Nothing in life is promised except death.

A mission statement is not something you write overnight… But fundamentally, your mission statement becomes your constitution, the solid expression of your vision and values. It becomes the criterion by which you measure everything else in your life.

The only service a friend can really render is to keep up your courage by holding up to you a mirror in which you can see a noble image of yourself.

Things in themselves have no life in them. A car can’t comfort or encourage you. A house means nothing if there’s no life and love inside.

The man who complains about the way the ball bounces is likely the one who dropped it.

The essence of philosophy is that a man should so live that his happiness shall depend as little as possible on external things.

You’re just left with yourself all the time, whatever you do anyway. You’ve got to get down to your own God in your own temple. It’s all down to you, mate.

God is a concept by which we measure our pain.

No man was ever wise by chance.

Whatever the universal nature assigns to any man at any time is for the good of that man at that time.

My fat never made me less money.

When we see persons of worth, we should think of equaling them; when we see persons of a contrary character, we should turn inwards and examine ourselves.

We do not need to proselytise either by our speech or by our writing. We can only do so really with our lives. Let our lives be open books for all to study.

A brain of feathers, and a heart of lead.

Assuming if there’s such a thing as reality, if you have a false relationship with it, how can you do anything but fail?

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.

The heresy of one age becomes the orthodoxy of the next.

People seem not to see that their opinion of the world is also a confession of character.

Reserve your right to think, for even to think wrongly is better than not to think at all.

I have never given adoration to any body except myself.

Man is not a machine that can be remodelled for quite other purposes as occasion demands, in the hope that it will go on functioning as regularly as before but in a quite different way. He carries his whole history with him; in his very structure is written the history of mankind.

The distinction between the past, present and future is only a stubbornly persistent illusion.

No policy that does not rest upon some philosophical public opinion can be permanently maintained.

If we long to believe that the stars rise and set for us, that we are the reason there is a Universe, does science do us a disservice in deflating our conceits?

Will and intellect are one and the same thing.

The book, ’12 Rules For Life,‘ is a very serious book. There’s elements of humor in it, but I’m trying to struggle with things at the deepest possible level and to explain to people why it’s necessary to live a upstanding and noble and moral and truthful and responsible life, and why there’s hell to pay if you don’t do that.

I did used to have nightmares about the idea that when I die, there is a spark of consciousness which basically creates the world. ‚Is the world going to disappear if this spark of consciousness disappears? And how do I know it won’t? How do I know there’s anything there except what I’m conscious of?‘

Premature certainty is the enemy of the truth.

I think one’s feelings waste themselves in words; they ought all to be distilled into actions which bring results.

Our lives are a sum total of the choices we have made.

The experience of life consists of the experience which the spirit has of itself in matter and as matter, in mind and as mind, in emotion, as emotion, etc.

I tend to overthink things. I’m not the guy who screams ‚This is a world smash!‘ when I finish a song.

We see the world not as it is, but as we are.

Our faith is faith in someone else’s faith, and in the greatest matters this is most the case.

Every man supposes himself not to be fully understood or appreciated.

I have the problems of, I must confess, old age.

I am good, but not an angel. I do sin, but I am not the devil. I am just a small girl in a big world trying to find someone to love.