Billy Corgan Quotes

The principal rule of art is to please and to move. All the other rules were created to achieve this first one.

I'm an artist with a message, and my message is more for society, casting the mirror onto them and saying, 'Hey, this is what we look like, what are we going to do about it, how are we going to use what we've been through to aid where we're going.'

Which implies that the real issue in art is the audience's response. Now I claim that when I make things, I don't care about the audience's response, I'm making them for myself. But I'm making them for myself as audience, because I want to wake myself up.

If you don't know yourself, you don't know your nature. If you don't know your nature, you don't know where to exist. By knowing your nature, knowing yourself, you know what to be and how to live. And that only comes from knowledge of self, knowing yourself.

It's our very capacity for self-consciousness that makes us self-destructive!

It is always understood as an expression of condemnation when anything in Literature or Art is said to be done for effect; and yet to produce an effect is the aim and end of both.

Self-realization is the knowing in all parts of body, mind, and soul that you are now in possession of the kingdom of God.

Awareness precedes choice and choice precedes results.

I don't trust anyone who hasn't been self-destructiv e in some way, and who hasn't gone through some sort of bout of self-loathing. You've got to bang yourself around a bit to know yourself.

Human freedom involves our capacity to pause between the stimulus and response and, in that pause, to choose the one response toward which we wish to throw our weight. The capacity to create ourselves, based upon this freedom, is inseparable from consciousness or self-awareness. (p. 100)

If your struggle with the conflicting parts of yourself is conscious, you are able to choose consciously the response that will create the karma that you desire. You will be able to bring to bear upon your decision an awareness of what lies behind each choice, and the consequences of each choice, and choose accordingly. When you enter into your decision-making dynamic consciously, you insert your will consciously into the creative cycle through which your soul evolves, and you enter consciously into your own evolution.

He is conscious only of God...To be conscious of knowing God is to know about God and self.

The soul raised over passion beholds identity and eternal causation, perceives the self-existance of Truth and Right, and calms itself with knowing that all things go well.

Without love the acquisition of knowledge only increases confusion and leads to self-destruction.

All men contain several men inside them, and most of us bounce from one self to another without ever knowing who we are.

I don't know an actor who hasn't let himself down at some point. I imagine it's the same in politics. There's always the potential to self sabotage.

The overall commentary on what I'm doing is saying, 'Hey look! I get to create whatever persona I want to, and it's all up to me. And the truth is, we are all - basically the universe - pretending to be humans for a brief moment of time. With a little self-induced amnesia.

While we are sitting in meditation, we are simply exploring humanity and all of creation in the form of ourselves. We can become the world's greatest experts on anger, jealousy, and self-deprecatio n, as well as on joyfulness, clarity, and insight. Everything that human beings feel, we feel. We can become extremely wise and sensitive to all of humanity and the whole universe simply by knowing ourselves, just as we are.

The thing about seeing the big picture and being self-aware is knowing that it's not about you. It's about the big picture. It's not about you. It's not. This is not about you.

Overcoming difficulties leads to courage, self-respect, and knowing yourself.

I never do anything I don't want to do. Nor does anyone, but in my case I am always aware of it.

The first choice an artist makes is precisely to be an artist, and if he chooses to be an artist it is in consideration of what he is himself and because of a certain idea he has of art

You have to start knowing yourself so well that you begin to know other people. A piece of us is in every person we can ever meet.

God defend me from myself.

Knowing what you admire in others is a wonderful mirror into your deepest, as yet unborn, self.