My mother bore me in the southern wild, And I am black, but O! my soul is white; White as an angel is the English child, But I am black as if bereaved of light.

To see a world in a grain of sand And a heaven in a wild flower, Hold infinity in the palm of your hand, And eternity in an hour.

In the universe, there are things that are known, and things that are unknown, and in between, there are doors.

If the doors of perception were cleansed everything would appear to man as it is, infinite.

The man who never alters his opinions is like standing water, and breeds reptiles of the mind.

He who kisses joy as it flies by will live in eternity's sunrise.

The person who does not believe in miracles surely makes it certain that he or she will never take part in one.

Make your own rules or be a slave to another man's.

And we are put on earth a little space, That we may learn to bear the beams of love.

Enlightenment means taking full responsibility for your life.

Do what you will this life's a fiction, And is made up of contradiction.

Become the leader of your life. Lead yourself to where you want to be. Breathe life back into your ambitions, your desires, your goals, your relationships.

Every struggle you overcome, will build the strength of your spirit.

Wealth is the slave of a wise man

Confidentiality is the essence of being trusted.

Sufism is therefore not 'Do as I say and not as I do', or even 'Do as I do', but 'Experience and you will know'.

I don't want to be patronizing . . . that means "talking down."

We decided that the environment was an integral part of our policies and the political thrust of our government. We gave it the priority and we sustained it with the money required to make it happen.

Recent decades clearly demonstrate that the more secular our Public Schools become the less successful they become academically.

I ... must continue to strive for more knowledge and more power, though the new knowledge always contradicts the old and the new power is the destruction of the fools who misuse it.

My advice to those who think they have to take off their clothes to be a star is, once you're boned, what's left to create the illusion? Let em wonder. I never believed in giving them too much of me.