Men are not prisoners of fate, but only prisoners of their own minds.

It may be hard for an egg to turn into a bird: it would be a jolly sight harder for it to learn to fly while remaining an egg. We are like eggs at present. And you cannot go on indefinitely being just an ordinary, decent egg. We must be hatched or go bad.

We forge the chains we wear in life.

Some people would like me to be round again.

Brad was a huge surprise to me. I think we were both the last two people who were looking for a relationship. I certainly wasn’t. I was quite content to be a single mom with Mad.

I didn’t always have 14,000 people wanting to hang out with me on a Saturday night.

A Religion of Evolution: that, when all is said and done, is what Man needs ever more explicitly if he is to survive and ‚superlive,‘ as soon as he becomes conscious of his power to ultra-hominize himself and of his duty to do so.

The more nobly a man wills and acts, the more avid he becomes for great and sublime aims to pursue. He will no longer be content with family, country, and the remunerative aspect of his work. He will want wider organisations to create, new paths to blaze, causes to uphold, truths to discover, an ideal to cherish and defend.

I’ve been called a moron since I was about four. My father called me a moron. My grandfather said I was a moron. And a lot of times when I’m driving, I hear I’m a moron. I like being a moron.

I am not the humblest person in the world. I admit that.

Much of your pain is the bitter potion by which the physician within you heals your sick self.

What lies behind us and what lies ahead of us are tiny matters compared to what lives within us.

Sleep is the best meditation.

To lead people walk behind them.

I’m not afraid to make mistakes.

Workers of the world unite; you have nothing to lose but your chains.

With public sentiment, nothing can fail. Without it, nothing can succeed.

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.

Every time you think the problem is ‚out there,‘ that very thought is the problem.

Fear is exciting for me.

If you could kick the person in the pants responsible for most of your trouble, you wouldn’t sit for a month.

I became a people-watcher when I lost all my friends when I was 12.

Ethics is in origin the art of recommending to others the sacrifices required for cooperation with oneself.

To live alone is the fate of all great souls.

I wake up every morning in a house that was built by slaves, and I watch my daughters – two beautiful, intelligent black young women – playing with their dogs on the White House lawn. And because of Hillary Clinton, my daughters, and all our sons and daughters, now take for granted that a woman can be president of the United States.

Constant kindness can accomplish much. As the sun makes ice melt, kindness causes misunderstanding, mistrust, and hostility to evaporate.

You’ve got to learn to survive a defeat. That’s when you develop character.

Courage that grows from constitution often forsakes a man when he has occasion for it; courage which arises from a sense of duty acts; in a uniform manner.

To improve is to change; to be perfect is to change often.

We spend our lives, all of us, waiting for the great day, the great battle, or the deed of power. But that external consummation is not given to many: nor is it necessary. So long as our being is tensed, directed with passion, towards that which is the spirit of all things, then that spirit will emerge from our own hidden, nameless effort.

Power over others is weakness disguised as strength.

It seems the older you get, the more life comes into focus.

It is easier to prevent bad habits than to break them.

Disciplining yourself to do what you know is right and important, although difficult, is the highroad to pride, self-esteem, and personal satisfaction.

There’s no substitute for the practice of meditation.

Before I can live with other folks I’ve got to live with myself. The one thing that doesn’t abide by majority rule is a person’s conscience.

A pessimist sees the difficulty in every opportunity; an optimist sees the opportunity in every difficulty.

To become ‚unique,‘ the challenge is to fight the hardest battle which anyone can imagine until you reach your destination.

The great secret of success is to go through life as a man who never gets used up.

A part of me has become immortal, out of my control.

If I relaxed, if I took my foot off the gas, I would probably die.

You always have to remember that if you say something negative, it’s going to come back to haunt you.

I went through a lot of battles in high school.

The highest result of education is tolerance.

Mastery passes often for egotism.

If your inner life is not producing what you would like on the outside, don’t be discouraged… just be willing to change.

One can never consent to creep when one feels an impulse to soar.

Oppressed people cannot remain oppressed forever. The yearning for freedom eventually manifests itself.

I am not a particularly thick-skinned person.

I write for no other purpose than to add to the beauty that now belongs to me. I write a book for no other reason than to add three or four hundred acres to my magnificent estate.

Never was it given to mortal man – To lie so boldly as we women can.

The hardest thing for – not only an artist but for anybody to do is look themselves in the mirror and acknowledge, you know, their own flaws and fears and imperfections and put them out there in the open for people to relate to it.

I never fall in love.

Experience never errs; it is only your judgments that err by promising themselves effects such as are not caused by your experiments.

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

Cultivation to the mind is as necessary as food to the body.

I cannot always control what goes on outside. But I can always control what goes on inside.

Since everything is in our heads, we had better not lose them.

We should seek the greatest value of our action.

Be the hunter, not the hunted.

I’ve just tried to grow up in the most natural and gradual process that I possibly can and make choices I feel are right for me and my fans.