Pride is corrosive, and it rubs off. You're going to have a tough time developing Christlike humility and thinking of yourself with sober judgment if your close friends are arrogant, full of pride, and looking down their noses at everyone else.

Associate yourself with people of good quality, for it is better to be alone than to be in bad company.

Everything each of us does affects the others. None of us lives in a vacuum. We're simply children on a quest to gain the highest forms of wisdom without being compromised in the process. But when one is compromised, the others are compromised. You see that, don't you?

I grew up in the '80s in L.A., so Ice Cube and Magic Johnson are my heroes.

I saw to what extent the people among whom I lived could be trusted as good neighbors and friends; that their friendship was for summer weather only; that they did not greatly propose to do right; that they were a distinct race from me by their prejudices and superstitions

To come down to my own experience, my companion and I, for I sometimes have a companion, take pleasure in fancying ourselves knights of a new, or rather an old, order—not Equestrians or Chevaliers, not Ritters or Riders, but Walkers, a still more ancient and honorable class, I trust.

I vividly remember a conversation I had many years ago in 1974, which marked a turning point in my leadership journey. I was sitting at a Holiday Inn with my friend, Kurt Campmeyer, when he asked me if I had a personal growth plan. I didn't. In fact, I didn't even know you were supposed to have one.

The best thing is to always keep honest people around, because when you have a bunch of yes men around that know that you're making a mistake but let you go on with it, that's when it ruins your mind state as an artist.

I was performing in New York and my friends started to call me Gaga, they said I was very theatrical and they said, 'You're Gaga'.

Treat your friend as if he might become an enemy.

There are some tremendous actors in the U.K. who have been knighted, and I've spent much of my life admiring many of them, like Laurence Olivier. So it's very flattering to be in their company. But you also end up in the company of people you don't admire, including some rather dodgy politicians.

Align yourself with people that you can learn from, people who want more out of life, people who are stretching and searching and seeking some higher ground in life.