“If we do not discipline ourselves the world will do it for us.”

Every social injustice is not only cruel, but it is economic waste.

The good deed is usually done by somebody on whom I have no claim.

Not a tenth of us who are in business are doing as well as we could if we merely followed the principles that were known to our grandfathers.

Success seems to be largely a matter of hanging on after others have let go.

One way to get the most out of life is to look upon it as an adventure.

Some of us might find happiness if we quit struggling so desperately for it.

Business is always interfering with pleasure – but it makes other pleasures possible.

Women lie about their age; men lie about their income.

An invitation to a wedding invokes more trouble than a summons to a police court.

A man must not deny his manifest abilities, for that is to evade his obligations.

Any man who makes a speech more than six times a year is bound to repeat himself, not because he has little to say, but because he wants applause and the old stuff gets it.

Few of us get anything without working for it.

One of the indictments of civilizations is that happiness and intelligence are so rarely found in the same person.

The best sermon is preached by the minister who has a sermon to preach and not by the man who has to preach a sermon.

Many of our prayers were not answered, and for this we are now grateful.

An idea isn’t worth much until a man is found who has the energy and ability to make it work.

No mention of God. They keep Him up their sleeves for as long as they can, vicars do. They know it puts people off.

You can’t get there by bus, only by hard work and risk and by not quite knowing what you’re doing. What you’ll discover will be wonderful. What you’ll discover will be yourself.

I tend to curse in French more often than I do in English.

That’s what we’re all doing, all the time, whether we know it or not. Whether we like it or not. Creating something on the spur of the moment with the materials at hand.

It’s a great feeling to know that 100 cops want to stop you doing something and they can’t.

Everybody’s on their toes and focused on what we’re about to do, and then there’s this moment where you relax because you see that everybody is there to do the best that they can.

One’s doing well if age improves even slightly one’s capacity to hold on to that vital truism: “This too shall pass.

I’m always a little leery about doing shows where I’m not the headliner because when I first started playing in 1982 I opened for Missing Persons and got pelted for 45 minutes.