Count your age by friends, not years. Count your life by smiles, not tears.

When you do something noble and beautiful and nobody noticed, do not be sad. For the sun every morning is a beautiful spectacle and yet most of the audience still sleeps.

“I’m not going to change the way I look or the way I feel to conform to anything. I’ve always been a freak. So I’ve been a freak all my life and I have to live with that, you know. I’m one of those people.”

”Rituals are important. Nowadays it’s hip not to be married. I’m not interested in being hip. “

“When I was 5 years old, my mother always told me that happiness was the key to life. When I went to school, they asked me what I wanted to be when I grew up. I wrote down ‘happy’. They told me I didn’t understand the assignment, and I told them they didn’t understand life. “

“There are two basic motivating forces: fear and love. When we are afraid, we pull back from life. When we are in love, we open to all that life has to offer with passion, excitement, and acceptance. We need to learn to love ourselves first, in all our glory and our imperfections. If we cannot love ourselves, we cannot fully open to our ability to love others or our potential to create. Evolution and all hopes for a better world rest in the fearlessness and open-hearted vision of people who embrace life. “

“As usual, there is a great woman behind every idiot.”

“Declare it. Just the same way we declare war. That is how we will have peace… we just need to declare it.”

“I believe in everything until it’s disproved. So I believe in fairies, the myths, dragons. It all exists, even if it’s in your mind. Who’s to say that dreams and nightmares aren’t as real as the here and now? “

“Living is easy with eyes closed.”

“If everyone demanded peace instead of another television set, then there’d be peace. “

“God is a concept by which we measure our pain.”

“If we cannot love ourselves, we cannot fully open to our ability to love others or our potential to create.”

“There are two basic motivating forces: fear and love. When we are afraid, we pull back from life.”

“Before Elvis there was nothing.”

“It matters not who you love, where you love, why you love, when you love or how you love, it matters only that you love.”

“There’s an alternative to violence. It’s to stay in bed and grow your hair.”

“I don’t know which will go first- rock ‘n’ roll or christianity.”

“Part of me suspects that I’m a loser, and the other part of me thinks I’m God Almighty.”

“I believe in God, but not as one thing, not as an old man in the sky. I believe that what people call God is something in all of us. I believe that what Jesus and Mohammed and Buddha and all the rest said was right. It’s just that the translations have gone wrong. “

“As in a love affair, two creative people can destroy themselves trying to recapture that youthful spirit, at twenty-one or twenty-four, of creating without even being aware of how it’s happening.”

” Evolution and all hopes for a better world rest in the fearlessness and open-hearted vision of people who embrace life.”

“It’s better to fade away like an old soldier than to burn out.”

“When I was about twelve, I used to think I must be a genius, but nobody’s noticed. If there is such a thing as a genius…I am one, and if there isn’t, I don’t care.”

“We live in a world where we have to hide to make love, while violence is practiced in broad daylight.”

“You have to be a bastard to make it, and that’s a fact.”

“If everyone could just be happy with themselves and the choices people around them make, the world would instantly be a better place! “

“Trying to please everybody is impossible – if you did that, you’d end up in the middle with nobody liking you. You’ve just got to make the decision about what you think is your best, and do it.”

“I’m not afraid of death because I don’t believe in it. It’s just getting out of one car, and into another.”

“I’m not really a career person; I’m a gardener, basically.”

“Love, Love, Love. All you need is love. Love is all you need.”

“All we are saying is give peace a chance.”

“There’s nowhere you can be that isn’t where you’re meant to be…”

“If someone thinks that peace and love are just a cliche that must have been left behind in the 60s, that’s a problem. Peace and love are eternal.”

“Only by trying on other people’s clothes do we find what size we are.”

“Produce your own dream. If you want to save Peru, go save Peru. It’s quite possible to do anything, but not if you put it on the leaders and the parking meters. Don’t expect Carter or Reagan or John Lennon or Yoko Ono or Bob Dylan or Jesus Christ to come and do it for you. You have to do it yourself.”

“We’ve got this gift of love, but love is like a precious plant. You can’t just accept it and leave it in the cupboard or just think it’s going to get on by itself. You’ve got to keep watering it. You’ve got to really look after it and nurture it.”

“Imagine all the people living life in peace. You may say I’m a dreamer, but I’m not the only one. I hope someday you’ll join us, and the world will be as one.”

“Music is everybody’s possession. It’s only publishers who think that people own it.”

“My role in society, or any artist’s or poet’s role, is to try and express what we all feel. Not to tell people how to feel. Not as a preacher, not as a leader, but as a reflection of us all.”

“Surrealism had a great effect on me because then I realised that the imagery in my mind wasn’t insanity. Surrealism to me is reality.”

“One thing you can’t hide – is when you’re crippled inside.”

“When you’re drowning you don’t think, I would be incredibly pleased if someone would notice I’m drowning and come and rescue me. You just scream.”

“For those of you in the cheap seats I’d like ya to clap your hands to this one; the rest of you can just rattle your jewelry!”

“War is over … If you want it.”

“How can I go forward when I don’t know which way I’m facing?”

“Love is a promise, love is a souvenir, once given never forgotten, never let it disappear.”

“Everything will be okay in the end. If it’s not okay, it’s not the end.”

“Everybody loves you when you’re six foot in the ground.”

“There is an alternative to war. It’s staying in bed and growing your hair.”