“I may be no better, but at least I am different.”

To renounce freedom is to renounce one’s humanity, one’s rights as a man and equally one’s duties.

We cannot teach children the danger of lying to men without feeling as men, the greater danger of lying to children.

Alas, it is when we are beginning to leave this mortal body that it most offends us!

To renounce liberty is to renounce being a man, to surrender the rights of humanity and even its duties.

I have never thought, for my part, that man’s freedom consists in his being able to do whatever he wills, but that he should not, by any human power, be forced to do what is against his will.

It is a great evil for a Chief of a nation to be born the enemy of the freedom whose defender he should be.

Or, rather, let us be more simple and less vain.

Why should we build our happiness on the opinons of others, when we can find it in our own hearts?

I feel an indescribable ecstasy and delirium in melting, as it were, into the system of being, in identifying myself with the whole of nature.

I prefer liberty with danger than peace with slavery.

Nature made me happy and good, and if I am otherwise, it is society’s fault.

If force compels obedience, there is no need to invoke a duty to obey, and if force ceases to compel obedience, there is no longer any obligation.

There are times when I am so unlike myself that I might be taken for someone else of an entirely opposite character.

I hate books; they only teach us to talk about things we know nothing about.

Quit thy childhood, my friend, and wake up!

My love for imaginary objects and my facility in lending myself to them ended by disillusioning me with everything around me, and determined that love of solitude which I have retained ever since that time.

Well my music was different in high school; I was singing about love—you know, things I don’t care about anymore.

You have to learn and develop from every experience you see on the field. I might see an unscouted blitz. I might see different coverages than I’m expecting. So I need to process and make those adjustments as I go.

Performing is my therapy, to become different people onstage.

The past is like a handful of dust. It filters through your fingers, disappearing little by little. I wish, for one day, I could go back. In another life, I would do things differently.

I’m okay with having bad dance moves. I’m okay with having horrible lower teeth. That’s what makes me me, and for some reason, it’s worked out all right.

People don’t want just vanilla. They want 31 flavors. I couldn’t do what Rihanna does. I couldn’t do what Gaga does. They can’t do what I do.

It is indifferent to me where I am to begin, for there shall I return again.

We are all too often told by someone that we are too old, too young, too different, too much the same, and those comments can be devastating.