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We've been taught that the renaissance was one of the great golden ages of civilisation. The renaissance was not a golden age, it was the end of a golden age.

George Bush is a fan of mine — he came to see me in the Seventies. His coke dealer brought him.

Ever notice that “what the hell” is always the right decision?

And those who were seen dancing were thought to be insane by those who could not hear the music.

Each definition is a piece of secret ripped from Nature by the human spirit. I insist on this: any complicated thing being illumined by definitions, being laid out in them, being broken up in pieces, will be separated into pieces completely transparent even to a child, excluding foggy and dark parts that our intuition whispers to us while acting, separating the object into logical pieces, then only can we move further towards new success due to definitions.

What if I want something more then the pale facsimile of fulfilment brought by a parade of ever-fancier toys? To spend my life restlessly producing instead of sedately consuming? Is there an app for that?

Travel light and trust in serendipity.

Don't put limitations on yourself, other people will do that for you, don't do it to yourself. Don't bet against yourself, take risks. NASA has this phrase they like, “failure is not an option”. But failure has to be an option, in art and in exploration, because it's a leap of faith. No important endeavour that required innovation was done without risk. You have to be willing to take those risks. So that is the thought I would leave you with, “in whatever you are doing, failure is an option, but fear is not.”

Liberty, not the daughter, but the mother of order.

To practice any art, no matter how well or badly, is a way to make your soul grow. So do it.

Nothing is enough.

Why do you never find anything written about that idiosyncratic thought you advert to, about your fascination with something no on else understands? Because it is up to you. There is something you find interesting, for a reason hard to explain. It is hard to explain because you have never read it on any page; there you begin. You were made and set here to give voice to this, your own astonishment.

It is good to have an end to journey towards; but it is the journey that matters in the end.

The junk merchant does not sell his product to the consumer, he sells the consumer to the product. He does not improve and simplify his merchandise, he degrades and simplifies the client.

We don't have any walled gardens in our world, because there's no margin in controlling things for poor people. … it really is just you rich people that get locked up for your own safety. We will still be free, and living in dangerous lands. … Just like in the real world, our neighborhoods online will be built from crap materials, mildly dangerous, old, and interesting. … I think the halcyon days are ahead for the life of the mind among the poor, and we'll do it with the same freedom we've done everything, the freedom of the forgotten.

And, in the end, the love you take is equal to the love you make.

People can be taught to hate. And people can be taught to spell. But apparently, it's one or the other.

A superior pilot uses his superior judgment to avoid having to exercise his superior skill.

Information wants you to give me a dollar.

The street has its own use for things.

Beauty is an ecstasy; it is as simple as hunger.

At the end, regret only what you didn't do.

I hate censorship, but I also hate a lot of stuff that's out there, and I wish there was some way to kill it without censoring it. It's the problem of being a fucking liberal, you're stuck with this dichotomy all the bloody time. You want everything to be nice but you also want everything to be free, and most of the free stuff is nasty.

Just as the eye perceives colours and the ear sounds, so thinking perceives ideas.

I have crawled up their asshole and am going to change them from the bloodstream.

Every child is an artist. The problem is how to remain an artist once we grow up.

In dwelling, live close to the ground. In thinking, keep it to the simple. In conflict, be fair and generous. In governing, don't try to control. In work, do what you enjoy. In family life, be completely present.

What is here is everywhere; what is not here, is nowhere.

I'm not a drug addict, I am in IT. Everyone in IT dresses like this.

We don't seek out the forbidden, we just repudiate any notion of authorization.

What should young people do with their lives today? Many things, obviously. But the most daring thing is to create stable communities in which the terrible disease of loneliness can be cured.

Twenty years from now you will be more disappointed by the things you didn't do than by the ones you did do. So throw off the bowlines, sail away from the safe harbor. Catch the trade winds in your sails. Explore. Dream. Discover.

A good traveler has no fixed plans and is not intent on arriving.

Your true traveler finds boredom rather agreeable than painful. It is the symbol of his liberty – his excessive freedom. He accepts his boredom – when it comes, not merely philosophically, but almost with pleasure.

To travel is to discover that everyone is wrong about other countries.

Traveling is like flirting with life. It's like saying, “I would stay and love you, but I have to go; this is my station.”

One always begins to forgive a place as soon as it's left behind.

I should like to spend the whole of my life in traveling abroad, if I could anywhere borrow another life to spend afterward at home.

The way to truth lies through the destruction of the false. To destroy the false, you must question your most inveterate beliefs. Of these the idea that you are the body is the worst. With the body comes the world, with the world — God, who is supposed to have created the world and thus it starts — fears, religions, prayers, sacrifices, all sorts of systems — all to protect and support the child-man, frightened out of his wits by monsters of his own making. Realize that what you are cannot be born nor die and with the fear gone, all suffering ends.

The heaviness of being successful was replaced with the lightness of being a beginner again.

Stay hungry. Stay foolish.

All that a guru can tell you is: “My dear Sir, you are quite mistaken about yourself. You are not the person you take yourself to be.”

I. Have. Striven. For. Genius.

But I have known failure.

Ever since happiness heard your name, it has been running through the streets. Trying to find you.

It is a great gift to know where you need to be, before you have been to all the places you don't need to be.

If you are an orthodox scientist, I would only suggest that, as you have a thousand times in the past when you were working on a problem, let curiosity and wonder bubble up, but in this case don't focus it on a specific solution. Simply let wonder fill your being until it takes you out of yourself and into the staggering mystery that is the existence of the world, a mystery that facts alone can never begin to fill. If Spirit does exist, it will lie in that direction, the direction of wonder, a direction that intersects the very heart of science itself. And you will find, in this adventure, that the scientific method will never be left behind in the search for an ultimate ground.

There is nothing that will cure the senses but the soul, and nothing that will cure the soul but the senses.

We are what we pretend to be, so we must be careful about what we pretend to be.

If you’re going to try, go all the way. Otherwise, don’t even start. This could mean losing girlfriends, wives, relatives and maybe even your mind. It could mean not eating for three or four days. It could mean freezing on a park bench. It could mean jail. It could mean derision. It could mean mockery–isolation. Isolation is the gift. All the others are a test of your endurance, of how much you really want to do it. And, you’ll do it, despite rejection and the worst odds. And it will be better than anything else you can imagine. If you’re going to try, go all the way. There is no other feeling like that. You will be alone with the gods, and the nights will flame with fire. You will ride life straight to perfect laughter. It’s the only good fight there is.

It's not the daily increase but daily decrease. Hack away at the unessential.

The great moral question of the twenty-first century is this: if all knowing, all culture, all art, all useful information can be costlessly given to everyone at the same price that it is given to anyone; if everyone can have everything, anywhere, all the time, why is it ever moral to exclude anyone?

When you get the message, hang up the phone.

Faith is, above all, openness — an act of trust in the unknown.

The Net interprets censorship as damage and routes around it.

Be liberal in what you accept, and conservative in what you send.

I love it when a plan comes together!

Worrying is like praying for what you don't want.

And now we have two forces in opposition, both originating in the mind. Our old mind hews closely to the community and Dunbar's Number. Our new mind seeks the power of the mob, and the amplification of numbers beyond imagination. This is the central paradox of the early 21st century, this is the rift which will never close. On one side we are civil, and civilized. On the other we are awesome, terrible, and terrifying. And everything we've done in the last fifteen years has simply pushed us closer to the abyss of the awesome.