Jackie Mason Quotes

There's something really earnest inside me all the time. It's not a cool or fun way to be. Sometimes I would like to experience being someone who's not wired the way I'm wired.

My greatest strength is to have a great capacity to confront myself no matter how unpleasant. My greatest weakness is that I don't. I know that's enigmatic, but that's sort of a general formula for anyone, actually.

I don't tally the world, asking, "Would this annoy you? Would this annoy you?" That's so far removed from where I'm at when I'm in the trenches struggling with how to express things that I don't fully understand myself.

I had an occasional flash of understanding, but then got selfishly wrapped up again in my own problems and pleasures.

I think I'm aware of what goes on in my mind more than some guys, and for that reason I fight more battles.

I was a self-centered bore. I was masochistic, and only thought I was happy. When I woke up and said, "there must be something wrong with me", I grew up. Because I never understood myself, how could I hope to understand anyone else? That's why I can truly say that now I can give a woman love for the first time in my life, because I can understand her.

Everything that irritates us about others can lead us to an understanding of ourselves.

I think I have a better sense of my weaknesses - being self-important, selfish and having a big ego probably triggers all the other stuff. I can see myself more clearly.

When you practice Buddhism, you have to always self-reflect, and you can't avoid your problems. That makes me understand human beings better. I feel that the more I do that in my own life, the more I can see how to play a character.

I'm trying to figure myself out through my movies. Whether it's big stuff like what we're doing here, or little stuff like, 'Why aren't I happier?' With every film I feel like I'm apologising for something. I feel I'm most successful when I'm looking for something that embarrasses me about my character that I'd like to expose.

I've had times in my life when I really haven't been able to figure myself out.

I am unjust, but I can strive for justice. My life's unkind, but I can vote for kindness. I, the unloving, say life should be lovely. I, that am blind, cry out against my blindness.

When I was in my twenties, I strongly identified with Jane Austen's 'Emma' - her human failings mixed with a desire to do good.

It's easy to point out the evil in other people, but that can be found in all of us. That selfishness, that is something we all have in us. Sometimes you are successful at dealing with it, and sometimes you are not.

You get to a point where you get tired of being stupid and selfish and not being honest with yourself.

As I matured, I became a smarter person, a more sensitive person, a more thinking person.

We all have weaknesses. But I have figured that others have put up with mine so tolerably that I would be much less than fair not to make a reasonable discount for theirs.

Meg, I give you your faults." "My faults!" Meg cried. "Your faults." "But I'm always trying to get rid of my faults!" "Yes," Mrs. Whatsit said. "However, I think you'll find they'll come in very handy on Camazotz.

When we are not engaged in thinking about some definite problem, we usually spend about 95 percent of our time thinking about ourselves. Now, if we stop thinking about ourselves for a while and begin to think of the other person's good points, we won't have to resort to flattery so cheap and false that it can be spotted almost before it is out of the mouth.

To others, being wrong is a source of shame; to me, recognizing my mistakes is a source of pride.

The true confessors have been aware that not only is life mostly failure, but that in one's failure or pettiness or wrongness exists the living drama of the self.

The more that we self-analyze ourselves, the nicer we are to people and to ourselves, and the more we understand each other.

Writers - human. I shudder to think how I must sometimes appear to others.

I wasn't really testing it on myself as much as I was learning from other people about what it meant to live and love with your whole heart, and then thinking, oh my god, I'm not doing that.

My strengths make me contemptuous. My weaknesses make me charitable.