Wisdom

Poetry is the language of the soul.

Hard work beats talent when talent doesn't work hard.

It's not about the cards you're dealt, but how you play the hand.

Live your life to the fullest.

If you want something bad enough, you can figure out how to make it happen.

Don't count the days, make the days count.

Success is not final, failure is not fatal. It's the courage to continue that counts.

The best time to plant a tree was 25 years ago. The second-best time is now.

It's not about the legs; it's about the heart and the mind.

Those who are conscious of their intelligence can achieve much with it and those who are not can achieve little.

The intelligent person must know how to separate the essential from the nonessential.

Humanity is OK, but 99% of people are boring idiots.

Love is not a contract between two narcissists. It's more than that. It's a construction that compels the participants to go beyond narcissism.

I think that in philosophical and psychoanalytic discussions, one should always take sides.

I think that the task of a thinker today is not to provide answers, but to show that the way we perceive a problem is false.

You've got to be a thermostat rather than a thermometer. A thermostat shapes the climate of opinion; a thermometer just reflects it.

I'm a bluesman in the life of the mind, and a jazzman in the world of ideas.

We live in a world in which we are dependent on others who saw what we never saw, hear what we never heard—an infinite feedback from others through which we harvest the fruits of the judgment of those we don't even know.

One way of looking at it is that mystery is something that will always be with us. It can be thought of as the error that presses us towards the truth.

The virtues are forms of knowledge, and moral principles are the product of past discoveries.