Most recently my battle has been against AIDS and the discrimination surrounding it.

The prejudice surrounding AIDS exacts a social death which precedes the actual physical one.

I believe your atmosphere and your surroundings create a mind state for you

I don’t know what it was, maybe the movie theaters in my immediate surrounding neighborhood in Burbank, but I never saw what would be considered A movies.

It’s just a theory really, but I have always thought that your physical surroundings can shape your voice and personality.

I moved to Europe in 1948 because I was trying to become a writer and couldn’t find in my surroundings, in my country, a certain stamina, a certain corroboration that I needed.

Family and the natural surroundings played a big role in shaping my values.

I know this world is ruled by infinite intelligence. Everything that surrounds us- everything that exists – proves that there are infinite laws behind it. There can be no denying this fact. It is mathematical in its precision

To live is to suffer, to survive is to find some meaning in the suffering.

I like to be surrounded by splendid things.

What surrounds us we endure better for giving it a name – and moving on.

Look wide, beyond your immediate surroundings and limits, and you see things in their right proportion. Look above the level of things around you and see a higher aim and possibility to your work.

When you lose a person you love so much, surviving the loss is difficult.

When you’re surrounded by flowers, you breath better.

Appreciate your surroundings and be grateful for it and that’s when good things happen.

Silence is never-ending speech. Vocal speech obstructs the other speech of silence. In silence one is in intimate contact with the surroundings. Language is only a medium for communicating one’s thoughts to another. Silence is ever speaking.

The last time I took drugs, I probably took more than anybody could survive.

As I began to love myself I stopped craving a different life, and I could see that everything that surrounded me was inviting me to grow. Today I call it

No campaign plan survives first contact with the enemy

If intelligence is our only edge, we must learn to use it better, to shape it, to understand its limitations and deficiencies — to use it as cats use stealth, as katydids use camouflage — to make it the tool of our survival.

Looking at fires when high, by the way, especially through one of those prism kaleidoscopes which image their surroundings, is an extraordinarily moving and beautiful experience.

They say: only the fittest of the fittest shall survive, stay alive

It makes me self-conscious. It’s because I’m known, in the limelight, that it’s getting all the gravy, but if you knew, if you saw some of the people who make it possible for UNICEF to help these children survive. These are the people who do the jobs-the unknowns, whose names you will never know…I at least get a dollar a year, but they don’t.

For to survive in the mount of this dragon we call America, we have had to learn this first and most vital lesson – that we were never meant to survive. Not as human beings

If they cannot love and resist at the same time, they probably will not survive.

It doesn’t matter what the income level of your family is, or if English is the first or second language. It makes no difference. The bottom line is that every child can be an academic champion, an academic champion and a superstar in academics.

Anticipation, I suppose, sometimes exceeds realization.

Hope not to succeed in borrowed plumes

Your birthday is the vintage of your wine; the mark that warns you of your future

There are many statues of men slaying lions, but if only the lions were sculptors there might be quite a different set of statues.

Success is not the result of spontaneous combustion. You must set yourself on fire

The thinking man must oppose all cruel customs no matter how deeply rooted in tradition and surrounded by a halo

The highest knowledge is to know that we are surrounded by mystery.

Science can flourish only in an atmosphere of free speech.

To learn that the world, though governed by eternal laws, has yet managed to surprise us

Do not bring people in your life who weigh you down. And trust your instincts…good relationships feel good. They feel right. They don’t hurt. They’re not painful. That’s not just with somebody you want to marry, but it’s with the friends that you choose. It’s with the people you surround yourselves with.

I’m just a product of my environment.