As a leader, people push you. They really want to keep pushing you until you get aggressive. Then they say, "Oh, see, it doesn't work."

We suffer because we want life to be different from what it is. We suffer because we try to make pleasurable what is painful, to make solid what is fluid, to make permanent what is always changing.

Our power comes not from suppressing others but from uplifting them.

This is bravery: using the challenge of daily life to sharpen our mind and open our heart.

Whatever we do lays a seed in our deepest consciousness, and one day that seed will grow.

Movement is good for the body. Stillness is good for the mind.

If we do not appreciate the sensitivity and subtlety of the human heart, how can we appreciate the sensitivity and subtlety of the natural world?

The self-assured strength that grows from knowing that we already have what we need makes us gentle, because we are no longer desperate.

Like gravity, karma is so basic we often don't even notice it.

We humans have come to a crossroads in our history: we can either destroy the world or create a good future.

The most outrageous thing we can do in this world is to accept what happens and fly with it.

Some revolutions resemble restorations, at least at first glance.

Shame is a soul eating emotion.

I've been in some beautiful places, but the prettiest sight is flying back to New Orleans. Being able to look down and say, 'I know where I am now.'

I think I probably hoped for it a little bit, but I'm not an optimist. I'm a realist... or maybe even a pessimist.

I've only covered a few songs because I feel that if you're not going to go beyond the original artist in some way, then don't disrespect what they created.

There's a very fine line between pleasure and pain. They are two sides of the same coin, one not existing without the other.

When the pain is great enough, we will let anyone be doctor.

Ah. My story. Are you certain you wish to hear it? It is long, unlikely, and remarkably unedifying -- shameful, even, to come from a minister's lips. Blasphemous, too, properly regarded.

I'll never get used to living without Mo, but the painful things that surround what happened to him aren't so painful any more - not so raw or so new.

If you go looking for loonies and religious fanatics and dropouts and freaks, I dare say you'll find it.