We never really grow up, we only learn how to act in public.....

We are born princes and the civilizing process makes us frogs....

Life is really simple, but we insist on making it complicated....

Man - despite his artistic pretensions, his sophistication, and his many accomplishments - owes his existence to a six inch layer of topsoil and the fact that it rains...

I've made an odd discovery.  Every time I talk to a savant I feel quite sure that happiness is no longer a possibility.  Yet when I talk with my gardener, I'm convinced of the opposite.....

We shall require a substantially new manner of thinking if mankind is to survive....

People don't like the true and simple; they like fairy tales and humbug.....

We are so clothed in rationalization and dissemblance that we can recognize but dimly the deep primal impulses that motivate us.....

Every individual has a place to fill in the world and is important in some respect whether he chooses to be so or not.....

 



 A man is called selfish not for pursuing his own good, but for neglecting his neighbor's.....

Don't think you're on the right road just because it’s a well-beaten path.....

Read, every day, something no one else is reading.  Think, every day, something no one else is thinking.  Do, every day, something no one else would be silly enough to do.  It is bad for the mind to continually be part of unanimity.....

You don't get harmony when everybody sings the same note.....

Be who you are and say what you feel, because those who mind don't matter and those who matter don't mind.....

A man must consider what a rich realm he abdicates when he becomes a conformist....

Nature made us individuals, as she did the flowers and the pebbles; but we are afraid to be peculiar, and so our society resembles a bag of marbles, or a string of mold candles.  Why should we all dress after the same fashion?  The frost never paints my windows twice alike.....

Do not follow where the path may lead.  Go, instead, where there is no path and leave a trail....

Great spirits have always found violent opposition from mediocrities.  The latter cannot understand it when a man does not thoughtlessly submit to hereditary...

In all affairs it's a healthy thing now and then to hang a question mark on the things you have long taken for granted.....

Not all those who wander are lost.....

You have enemies?  Good.  That means you've stood up for something, sometime in your life...

We are half ruined by conformity; but we should be wholly ruined without it. ....

The conventional view serves to protect us from the painful job of thinking...

The only man I know who behaves sensibly is my tailor; he takes my measurements anew each time he sees me.  The rest go on with their old measurements and expect me to fit them.....

 



With the pride of the artist, you must blow against the walls of every power that exists the small trumpet of your defiance.....

Whenever you find yourself on the side of the majority, it is time to pause and reflect.....

The individual has always had to struggle to keep from being overwhelmed by the tribe.  If you try it, you will be lonely often, and sometimes frightened.  But no price is too high to pay for the privilege of owning yourself. .....

Doubt is healthy.  It tests one's convictions.....

Before you can break out of prison, you must first realize you're locked up.....

One who walks in another's tracks leaves no footprints.....

I may not be different, but I'm definitely not the same.....

It is better to fail in originality than to succeed in imitation. .....

If you don't control your mind, someone else will......

In the moment of our creation we receive the stamp of our individuality; and much of life is spent in rubbing off or defacing the impression.....

Be open-minded, but not so open-minded that your brains fall out.....

Human beings, for all their pretensions, have a remarkable propensity for lending themselves to classification somewhere within neatly labeled categories.  Even the outrageous exceptions may be classified as outrageous exceptions.....! 

If you keep doing things like you've always done them, what you'll get is what you've already got.....

I don't rent space to anyone in my head....

Those who stand for nothing fall for anything.....

Don't let them tame you.....