It isn't the big pleasures that count the most; it's making a great deal out of the little ones.

Anybody can rise to a crisis and face a crushing tragedy with courage, but to meet the petty hazards of the day with a laugh- I really think that requires spirit!

I believe absolutely in my own free will and my own power to accomplish - and that is the belief that moves mountains.

The more I study men, the more I realize that they are nothing in the world but boys grown too big to be spankable.

I think that the most necessary quality for any person to have is imagination. It makes people able to put themselves in other people's places. It makes them kind and sympathetic and understanding.

Everybody likes a few surprises; it's a perfectly natural human craving.

It seems to me that a man who can think straight along for forty-seven years without changing a single idea ought to be kept in a cabinet as a curiosity.

The world is full of happiness, and plenty to go round, if you are only willing to take the kind that comes your way.

I am going to pretend that all life is just a game which I must play as skilfully and fairly as I can. If I lose, I am going to shrug my shoulders and laugh—also if I win.

‎Be careful not to keep your eyes glued to detail. Stand far enough away to get a perspective of the whole.

Thank heaven I don't inherit God from anybody! I am free to make mine up as I wish Him. He's kind and sympathetic and imaginative and forgiving and understanding - and He has a sense of humor.

I may err but I am not a heretic, for the first has to do with the mind and the second with the will!

To be a revolutionary you have to be a human being. You have to care about people who have no power.

Do you think Duke Ellington didn't listen to Debussy? Louis Armstrong loved opera, did you know that? Name me a jazz pianist who wasn't influenced by European music!

My heart is in my/ pocket. It is poems by Pierre Reverdy.

I'm not really interested in being king. I prefer to work for a living

If every component part of the nation claims the right of self-determination for itself, there is no one nation and there is no independence.

A worshiper's gift makes a statement about the worshiper and his God.

We've always lived in dark times. There has always been a range of human experience from the sublime to the brutal, and stories reflect it. It's no less brutal now; each age has its horrors.

My Brother starv'd between two Walls,His Children's Cry my Soul appalls