Yeah, I like to keep myself interested – I’ll kind of throw myself into some area that I don’t completely know or understand, that I’m not adept at, so I’m forced to swim in order to stay afloat. There’s a good feeling that comes from that.

No untroubled day has ever dawned for me.

Some people don’t like change, but you need to embrace change if the alternative is disaster.

To complain is always nonacceptance of what is. It invariably carries an unconscious negative charge. When you complain, you make yourself into a victim. When you speak out, you are in your power. So change the situation by taking action or by speaking out if necessary or possible; leave the situation or accept it. All else is madness.

The key is to keep company only with people who uplift you, whose presence calls forth your best.

We are cups, constantly and quietly being filled. The trick is, knowing how to tip ourselves over and let the beautiful stuff out.

Real knowledge is to know the extent of one’s ignorance.

The smarter the journalists are, the better off society is. For to a degree, people read the press to inform themselves – and the better the teacher, the better the student body.

You can’t learn in school what the world is going to do next year.

Fear is not a lasting teacher of duty.

I have spent many years of my life in opposition, and I rather like the role.

To be ignorant of what occurred before you were born is to remain always a child.

The formation of one’s character ought to be everyone’s chief aim.

Never stop fighting until you arrive at your destined place – that is, the unique you. Have an aim in life, continuously acquire knowledge, work hard, and have perseverance to realise the great life.

Life can be boring unless you put some effort into it.

Don’t be afraid to give your best to what seemingly are small jobs. Every time you conquer one it makes you that much stronger. If you do the little jobs well, the big ones will tend to take care of themselves.

Academic qualifications are important and so is financial education. They’re both important and schools are forgetting one of them.

We gain the strength of the temptation we resist.

Do what you can, with what you have, where you are.

I change during the course of a day. I wake and I’m one person, and when I go to sleep I know for certain I’m somebody else.

There are no constraints on the human mind, no walls around the human spirit, no barriers to our progress except those we ourselves erect.

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

With the new day comes new strength and new thoughts.

In every walk with nature one receives far more than he seeks.

No man ever prayed heartily without learning something.

You can’t do something forever.

I built a label at the same time I built a career.

I know I will never be happy, but I know I can be gay!

If you want to be a good writer, be the best writer in the world. That’s what I’ve done.

Education is the leading of human souls to what is best, and making what is best out of them.

The more a person seeks security, the more that person gives up control over their life.

I think we need more idiot control.

Failure is not a single, cataclysmic event. You don’t fail overnight. Instead, failure is a few errors in judgement, repeated every day.

I could never identify with that word, ‚weak.‘

My life is my argument.

The higher we are placed, the more humbly we should walk.

God enters by a private door into every individual.

The only man who never makes a mistake is the man who never does anything.

One must marry one’s feelings to one’s beliefs and ideas. That is probably the only way to achieve a measure of harmony in one’s life.

All you need in this life is ignorance and confidence, and then success is sure.

One of the wonderful things about Oprah: She teaches you to keep on stepping.

I don’t have all the answers.

To be great is to be misunderstood.

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.

The reason I became 297 pounds is because that was comfortable. What was very uncomfortable was running. What was very uncomfortable was being on a diet. What was very uncomfortable was trying to face things that I didn’t want to face. And I also realized, when I was really big, I had no growth. Why? Because I was living comfortable.

I don’t write so much now. I’m getting on 33, pot belly and creeping dementia.

Not what I have, but what I do is my kingdom.

Our ambition should be to rule ourselves, the true kingdom for each one of us; and true progress is to know more, and be more, and to do more.

The only shame is to have none.

In art, at a certain level, there is no ‚better than.‘ It’s just about trying to operate for yourself on the most supreme level, artistically, that you can and hoping that people get it.

I always teach myself calm and visualization stuff.

I always had a repulsive need to be something more than human.

Ambition is the last refuge of the failure.

It were a real increase of human happiness, could all young men from the age of nineteen be covered under barrels, or rendered otherwise invisible; and there left to follow their lawful studies and callings, till they emerged, sadder and wiser, at the age of twenty-five.

The person who has lived the most is not the one with the most years but the one with the richest experiences.

Why don’t they pass a constitutional amendment prohibiting anybody from learning anything? If it works as well as prohibition did, in five years Americans would be the smartest race of people on Earth.

Your most important work is always ahead of you, never behind you.

I set up situations that involve abandoning control and finding out what happens.

Where there is an observatory and a telescope, we expect that any eyes will see new worlds at once.

I always tried to turn every disaster into an opportunity.

The greatest discovery of my generation is that a human being can alter his life by altering his attitudes.