“We never fully grasp the import of any true statement until we have a clear notion of what the opposite untrue statement would be.”

Habit is a second nature, or rather, it is ‘ten times nature’.

Facts’ are the bounds of human knowledge, set for it, not by it.

We are thinking beings, and we cannot exclude the intellect from participating in any of our functions.

As long as there are postmen, life will have zest.

Where quality is the thing sought after, the thing of supreme quality is cheap, whatever the price one has to pay for it.

We with our lives are like islands in the sea, or like trees in the forest… But the trees also commingle their roots in the darkness underground.

If you give appreciation to people, you win their goodwill. But more important than that, practicing this philosophy has made a different person of me.

The ‘I think’ which Kant said must be able to accompany all my objects, is the ‘I breathe’ which actually does accompany them.

Earnestness means willingness to live with energy, though energy bring pain.

Experience, as we know, has a way of boiling over, and making us correct our present formulas.

With mere good intentions hell is proverbially paved.

Genius is the capacity for seeing relationships where lesser men see none.

Let everything you do be done as if it makes a difference.

If you want a quality, act as if you already had it.

Truth, as any dictionary will tell you, is a property of certain of our ideas. It means their agreement, as falsity means their disagreement, with reality.

The God of many men is little more than their court of appeal against the damnatory judgment passed on their failures by the opinion of the world.

I had a very diametrically opposite set of parents.

An intelligent investor gets satisfaction from the thought that his operations are exactly opposite to those of the crowd.

One second you’re having the time of your life in front of all these people, and then you come backstage to the exact opposite – there’s only lukewarm carrots back there.

The only thing of weight that can be said against modern honor is that it is directly opposite to religion. The one bids you bear injuries with patience, the other tells you if you don’t resent them, you are not fit to live.

[My music] is opposite to fashion.

We’ve known each other [in Motorpsycho ] since 1985 or ’86, are really different as personalities, and yet have actually never disagreed to any degree. We are really complimentary as musicians and songwriters too, and come from two total opposites in our approaches.

I always seem to be cast as slightly wan, ethereal, troubled intellectuals or physically ambivalent bad lovers. But I’m here to tell you I’m quite the opposite in real life. In fact I’m a f**king fantastic lover.

What we do in our group is the opposite of the bad effects of globalization. We produce in Italy and in France and we sell to China, when usually it’s the opposite.