“You can only find out what you actually believe (rather than what you think you believe) by watching how you act. You simply don’t know what you believe, before that. You are too complex to understand yourself.”

Don’t ever underestimate the destructive power of sins of omission.

There’s some real utility in gratitude. It’s also good protection against the dangers of victimhood and resentment.

It is far better to render beings in your care competent than to protect them.

It is far better to render beings in your car competent than to protect them.

Old age and treachery can always overcome youth and skill.

You cannot be protected from the things that frighten you and hurt you, but if you identify with the part of your being that is responsible for transformation, then you are always the equal, or more than the equal of the things that frighten you.

Pet a cat when you encounter one on the street.

So, listen, to yourself and to those with whom you are speaking. Your wisdom then consists not of the knowledge you already have, but the continual search for knowledge, which is the highest form of wisdom.

When existence reveals itself as existentially intolerable, thinking collapses in on itself. In such situations – in the depths—it’s noticing, not thinking, that does the trick.

Life is indistinguishable from effortful maintenance.

You’re not perfect just the way you are. You could be better!

Untruth corrupts the soul and the state alike, and one form of corruption feeds the other.

You’re going to pay a price for every bloody thing you do and everything you don’t do. You don’t get to choose to not pay a price. You get to choose which poison you’re going to take. That’s it.

Who cares if you are the prime minister of Canada when someone else is the president of the United States?

Every bit of learning is a little death. Every bit of new information challenges a previous conception, forcing it to dissolve into chaos before it can be reborn as something better. Sometimes such deaths virtually destroy us.

We believe that in reducing the scope and importance of our errors, we are properly humble; in truth, we are merely unwilling to bear the weight of our true responsibility.

I have always been among those who believed that the greatest freedom of speech was the greatest safety, because if a man is a fool, the best thing to do is to encourage him to advertise the fact by speaking.

Try to believe that still within you are flowers left to bloom.

From my experience and understanding, I believe money follows name and fame, while recognition calls for a huge amount of sacrifice. To get something, you have to lose something. That’s the rule of life.

The press is like a woman: sublime when it lies, it will not let go until it has forced you to believe it. The public, like a foolish husband, always succumbs.

I believe in Democracy because it releases the energies of every human being.

What I believe in is love your neighbor as yourself and don’t call him stupid because they don’t agree with you politically.

Do I believe in God? Yes I do. When you’ve had a life like mine, you have to.

And I really do believe that the most important thing is the way you live your life on earth. But I think it’s enormously comforting to believe that you’re going to see your loved ones.