Religion itself is without genius. There is no religious genius and no one would be permitted to distinguish between the talented and the untalented in religion.

The State calls its own violence, law; but that of the individual, crime.

Whoever will be free must make himself free. Freedom is no fairy gift to fall into a man's lap. What is freedom? To have the will to be responsible for one's self.

Freedom cannot be granted. It must be taken.

Whoso is full of sacred (religious, moral, humane) love loves only the spook, the "true man," and persecutes with dull mercilessness the individual, the real man.

We don't call it sin today, we call it self-expression.

My power is my property. My power gives me property. My power am I myself, and through it am I my property.

If it is right for me, it is right. It is possible that it is wrong for others: let them take care of themselves!

A race of altruists is necessarily a race of slaves. A race of free men is necessarily a race of egoists.

Whoever is a complete person does not need to be an authority.

He who is infatuated with Man leaves persons out of account so far as that infatuation extends, and floats in an ideal, sacred interest. Man, you see, is not a person, but an ideal, a spook.

The joy of living is the heart of thanksgiving.

A person without regrets is called a corpse.

If you possess the basic necessities in life, there is absolutely no reason for you to feel any sorrows. For there is someone praying to be in your place.

Walking through the Capitol Building gives you a sense of how it all began here. It was reassuring to see how restrained it was. It was very humble in a way.

The last thing I want to be is a rich black superstar. I just want to act.

I know what to keep to myself. I know what I want to give up.

Absolutely nothing visible to the eye provides a reason for or even evidence of those terrifying shifts which can in a matter of moments reconstitute a simple path into an extremely complicated one.

I did a long concert tour in England and Denmark and Sweden, and I also sang for the Soviet people, one of the finest musical audiences in the world.

We write because something inside says we must and we can no longer ignore that voice.

My endeavors Have ever come too short of my desires. Yet filed with my abilities.