What people really need and demand from life is not wealth, comfort, or esteem, but games worth playing

The stupid neither forgive nor forget; the naive forgive and forget; the wise forgive but do not forget.

If you talk to God, you are praying; If God talks to you, you have schizophrenia.

Every act of conscious learning requires the willingness to suffer an injury to one's self-esteem. That is why young children, before they are aware of their own self-importance, learn so easily.

People often say that this or that person has not yet found himself. But the self is not something one finds, it is something one creates.

In the animal kingdom, the rule is, eat or be eaten; in the human kingdom, define or be defined.

Labeling a child as mentally ill is stigmatization, not diagnosis. Giving a child a psychiatric drug is poisoning, not treatment.

In the past, men created witches: now they create mental patients.

Mental illness is a myth, whose function is to disguise and thus render more palatable the bitter pill of moral conflicts in human relations.

The neurotic has problems; the psychotic has solutions.

The FDA calls certain substances "controlled." But there are no "controlled substances," there are only controlled citizens.

Quoyle experienced moments in all colors, uttered brilliancies, paid attention to the rich sound of waves counting stones, he laughed and wept, noticed sunsets, heard music in rain, said I do.

I had long believed adversity was the greatest teacher, but I learnt that nothing teaches you more about life than death.

I just want to do something challenging.

If we steal thoughts from the moderns, it will be cried down as plagiarism; if from the ancients, it will be cried up as erudition.

Start marching forward, even when into the new and unknown, and don't be deterred by obstacles.

I try to be a careful person. Most of the time my carelessness is completely unintentional.

Peace may be negotiated by politicians, but it is something written in hearts and minds not on pieces of paper

Reality gets created through acts of observation

Greatness is earned, not given.

And I was struck all at once how life was out there going through its regular courses, and I was suspended, waiting, caught in a terrible crevice between living my life and not living it.