Most of us choose avoidance instead. As a result, we don’t live up to our potential, never becoming fully ourselves.

Higher forces must be experienced directly, and that takes effort. That means you'll face the same stark choice I did: demand proof that you'll never receive, or use the tools in the face of your doubts. When I stopped thinking and focused on the tools, my reward was life changing faith.

It’s a paradox; only when you desire fear, will you be able to take action in its presence—which is what courage consists of.

Fear is almost always linked to an image you have of something terrible happening in the future. To develop courage, you have to give up this illusion of future certainty.

There’s a hidden, inner strength that you cannot find unless you push yourself through adversity.

“The moment one definitely commits oneself, then Providence moves too … raising in one’s favor all manner of unforeseen incidents and meetings and material assistance, which no man could have dreamt would have come his way.”

The Comfort Zone is supposed to keep your life safe, but what it really does is keep your life small.

A few rare individuals refuse to live limited lives. They drive through tremendous amounts of pain—from rejections and failures to shorter moments of embarrassment and anxiety. They also handle the small, tedious pain required for personal discipline, forcing themselves to do things we all know we should do.

The more intense the pain—and the more aggressively you move into it—the more energy you’ll create.

No nation ever yet found any inconvenience from too close an inspection into the conduct of its officers, but many have been brought to ruin and reduced to slavery by suffering gradual impositions and abuses.

I'm very eclectic in my music tastes - anything from Nina Simone to Beethoven to Talvin Singh.

If I'd known how old I was going to be I'd have taken better care of myself.

It's human desire to be understood. And we always feel we're not understood.

I don't partake, really, of any of the typical rock-star-lifestyle things you could think of. I try to be responsible when I'm out on the road. I take it pretty seriously, what I'm doing, as something that's good for the world, and my family, and everyone.

Until a friend or relative has applied a particular proverb to your own life, or until you've watched him apply the proverb to his own life, it has no power to sway you.

Through history, people look for something spiritual. The greatest scientists in the world were men of religion and faith, too.

If you've got them by the balls, their hearts and minds will follow.

I'm just a very primitive, infantile folk singer.

Cranking the Auto-Tune is so easy to do that there's almost no systemic resistance to trying it. So when someone's stuck for an idea, that's what they do. I mean, to the extent that it's been embraced by an entire idiom of club music and culture.

I think of these things as obstacles rather than opportunities, because if they were opportunities it means I actually took the business of doing them seriously. To take myself too seriously is the gentle kiss of death.

Look, just go sit at the card table with the rest of the kids and let the adults run the country.

I think that in a year I may retire. I cannot take my money with me when I die and I wish to enjoy it, with my family, while I live. I should prefer living in Germany to any other country, though I am an American, and am loyal to my country.

I came to terms with not fitting in a long time ago. I never really fitted in. I don't want to fit in. And now people are buying into that.

No matter what I do, how much money I make, where I live, or what kind of car I drive, the stuff I skateboard on is the same stuff that every other kid in L.A., every kid in the country, everybody in the world is skateboarding on.

I'd love to do more theatre and acting. I attended a performing arts high school in London, and it would be great to be able to put all of that training to use again.

Positive thinking is more than just a tagline. It changes the way we behave. And I firmly believe that when I am positive, it not only makes me better, but it also makes those around me better.

When I'm boxing, if my career isn't going well, at least I feel mentally and physically strong.

It may take time but things will get better.

Very early, it became clear to me that East Germany could not function.

I'm tiny. I'm small.

David Letterman used to say, 'I wasn't the class clown, but I wrote for him,' and that's exactly it. You want to be known to be funny without having it pointed out.

I tend to be... they say 'workaholic,' which I just find to be 'motivated.'

Total physical and mental inertia are highly agreeable, much more so than we allow ourselves to imagine. A beach not only permits such inertia but enforces it, thus neatly eliminating all problems of guilt. It is now the only place in our overly active world that does.