I’m over being a pop star. I don’t wanna be a hot girl. I wanna be iconic. And I feel like I’ve accomplished a lot. I feel like I’m highly respected, which is more important than any award or any amount of records. And I feel like there comes a point when being a pop star is not enough.

Be not a slave of words.

Nothing is more destructive of respect for the government and the law of the land than passing laws which cannot be enforced.

I’m not sure if it’s good to have freedom or not. I’m really confused now.

We must be our own before we can be another’s.

You never make fun of anybody with a club foot or a withered arm, but it’s open season on anybody who stutters.

When I was making the early stuff, I never expected it to be so big. I was in my own kind of bubble. I never wanted to tour; I just wanted to create music and make a diary I could put out into the world. And sometimes, I became the characters.

I don’t want to make money, I just want to be wonderful.

To refuse awards is another way of accepting them with more noise than is normal.

If you are living out of a sense of obligation you are slave.

There’s a lot of great movies that have won the Academy Award, and a lot of great movies that haven’t. You just do the best you can.

I always was that person who was hard on myself and challenged myself no matter what I was doing, whether it was passing third grade or playing basketball.

I think there are a number of things that you can do to encourage your kids‘ dreams, but I do believe in speaking by experience of having a lot of help along the way, stumbling in the past. We’ve all stumbled, and we certainly all deserve to get up and walk again.

I vividly remember a conversation I had many years ago in 1974, which marked a turning point in my leadership journey. I was sitting at a Holiday Inn with my friend, Kurt Campmeyer, when he asked me if I had a personal growth plan. I didn’t. In fact, I didn’t even know you were supposed to have one.

I think the worst part about a breakup sometimes, if one could choose a worst part, would possibly be if you get out of a relationship, and you don’t recognize yourself because you changed a lot about you.

I meet young people who know me and are familiar with my stuff. They know the package. They might have cherry-picked five or six key tunes. That’s how it seems to work. I sometimes wonder if they realise they are not getting the whole context.

I don’t tell people, ‚You’re okay the way that you are.‘ That’s not the right story. The right story is, ‚You’re way less than you could be.‘

If cash comes with fame, come fame; if cash comes without fame, come cash.

Knowing your own darkness is the best method for dealing with the darknesses of other people.

You cannot see the changes that you’re dreaming about, because they’re internal.

If anything is good for pounding humility into you permanently, it’s the restaurant business.

Everybody wants to be me. What can I say?

My moms always told me, ‚How long you gonna play the victim?‘ I can say I’m mad and I hate everything, but nothing really changes until I change myself.

Do not look for approval except for the consciousness of doing your best.

You know, it’s not the world that was my oppressor, because what the world does to you, if the world does it to you long enough and effectively enough, you begin to do to yourself.

Well, I was 29 years old when I came to the United States Senate, and I have learned a lot.

When I won the first Grammy, there was no other feeling like that feeling. It just made me feel like I came so far, like that was just a dream a few years before that, and then it was happening right then.

We must, all of us, learn actually not to have enemies, but only confused adversaries who are ourselves in disguise.

I am, as a character, at times, a little overbearing. I recognize that.

Literature is strewn with the wreckage of men who have minded beyond reason the opinions of others.

In a universe that’s an intelligent system with a divine creative force supporting it, there simply can be no accidents. As tough as it is to acknowledge, you had to go through what you went through in order to get to where you are today, and the evidence is that you did.

Hair is about when you’re younger. I am my hair.

We become what we repeatedly do.

He who knows best knows how little he knows.

I have no time to think about other writers. I am too busy with my own problems.

There is only one failure in life possible, and that is not to be true to the best one knows.

I’ve never had that much trouble with the paparazzi, but I don’t run the same circles that a lot of these people that do get hounded by the paparazzi.

In hip-hop, there’s not a lot of love. There’s not a lot of love being spread. It’s always like ‚I’m stuntin‘ on you raps, or I’m better than you raps.‘ It’s not a lot of ‚Yo man, I idolize you raps.‘

I think beating myself up sometimes and knowing I am not happy when I do it makes me work harder to do a good job.

When men speak ill of thee, live so as nobody may believe them.

Moral authority comes from following universal and timeless principles like honesty, integrity, treating people with respect.

I was a bit challenged when I was younger to stay on the right path.

I learned that courage was not the absence of fear, but the triumph over it. The brave man is not he who does not feel afraid, but he who conquers that fear.

Nothing is more despicable than respect based on fear.

I always entertain the notion that I’m wrong, or that I’ll have to revise my opinion. Most of the time that feels good; sometimes it really hurts and is embarrassing.

I think, when you are growing up, you have to pull apart from what your mother wants or needs. You’ve got to go your own way, and that’s what I did.

I knew no one who’d ever been in the public eye.

Ordinary people seem not to realize that those who really apply themselves in the right way to philosophy are directly and of their own accord preparing themselves for dying and death.

Make bold choices and make mistakes. It’s all those things that add up to the person you become.

Every day we have plenty of opportunities to get angry, stressed or offended. But what you’re doing when you indulge these negative emotions is giving something outside yourself power over your happiness. You can choose to not let little things upset you.

I don’t regret anything.

With all due respect, I am against dumb.

I think my worst problem is actually living in the moment and understanding everything that’s going on. I feel like I’m in my own bubble.

It’s not what happens to you, but how you react to it that matters.

For me, education was power.

One of the many lessons that one learns in prison is, that things are what they are and will be what they will be.

Glory is fleeting, but obscurity is forever.

I hold the door for the ladies – I’m a gent.

Although I’m only fourteen, I know quite well what I want. I know who is right and who is wrong. I have my opinions, my own ideas and principles, and although it may sound pretty mad from an adolescent, I feel more of a person than a child. I feel quite independent of anyone.

Until you have cultivated the habit of saying some kind word of those whom you do not admire, you will be neither successful nor happy.

I am who I am and I say what I think. I’m not putting a face on for the record.