Frank Capra

The nice part about being a pessimist is that you are constantly being either proven right or pleasantly surprised.

There it is: it doesn’t make any difference who we are or what we are, there’s always somebody to look down on! somebody to hold in light esteem, somebody to be indifferent about.

You get what you ask for in this life. If you ask for nothing, you get nothing.

The love we were promised in fairy tales was never something for us to find. It has always been something for us to create.

People are never so likely to be wrong as when they are organized. And they never have so little freedom. Perhaps that is why the people at large keep their freedom. People can be manipulated only when they are organized.

Are you doing what you’re doing today because you want to do it or because it’s what you were doing yesterday?

I know all those people. I have friendly, social, and criminal relations with the whole lot of them.

When you allow a person’s words to upset you, you’re giving away your power.

Willpower is a myth. The problem with trying to use willpower to achieve and sustain a behavioral change is that it is fueled by emotion. And as we all know, our emotions are, at best, fickle. They come and go. When your emotions start running down — and they will — even your best-laid plans will fall flat.

Anger is nothing more than an outward expression of hurt, fear and frustration.

I beg you take courage; the brave soul can mend even disaster.

You almost never get the pleasure of seeing that you won the argument in real time. People just don’t like to publicly change their minds. They change their minds in private.

I mean, if you degrade someone, you isolate them, you control them, you call them names, you demean them. That’s a horrible existence for people.

What the world needs is more geniuses with humility, there are so few of us left.

A single question can be more influential than a thousand statements.