Peter Conrad Quotes

An humble knowledge of thyself is a surer way to God than a deep search after learning.

You have a bout with death, things that touch your mortality, when that happens, all that bling-bling gets thrown away because all you've got is you and God.

Be honest: Are you surprised that I didn't realize sooner? Are you surprised that it took me so long to even /think/ the word -- death? Dying? Dead? Do you think I was being stupid? Naive? Try not to judge. Remember that we're the same, you and me. I thought I would live forever too.

Knowledge is not wisdom: cleverness is not, not without awareness of our death, not without recalling just how brief our flare is. He who overreaches will, in his overreaching, lose what he possesses, betray what he has now. That which is beyond us, which is greater than the human, the unattainably great, is for the mad, or for those who listen to the mad, and then believe them.

The man who realizes his ignorance has taken the first step toward knowledge.

I have come to one conclusion: All that I am, all that I aspire to be, all that I was before, is by the grace of God. There are so many women in Africa, and outside Africa, who are more intelligent than I am.

I hope that five years and ten years from now, I'll be a better man, a more mature man, a wiser man, a more humble man and a more spirited man to serve the good of my people and the good of humanity.

I'd be lying if I said I had confidence in every choice I've made, that I have faith in every film I do on every shot.

Man tells his aspiration in his God; but in his demon he shows his depth of experience.

Fasting is, first and foremost, an exercise for identifying and managing adversity in all its forms. With faith, in full conscience, fasting calls women and men to an extra degree of self-awareness.

I'm not a god - I do bad things.

The presence of any humility in my life is purely and completely an evidence of God's grace. From my perspective, I am not a humble man. I am a proud man pursuing humility by the grace of God.

If I am not, may God put me there; and if I am, may God so keep me.

Young man, the secret of my success is that an early age I discovered that I was not God.

I always told, Sandra Bullock was my student when she was younger, I always told her it's important that we hold on to our insecurity, the wisdom of insecurity.

I talked about becoming stupid, but I've always been stupid. Fortunately I've been just smart enough to realize that I'm stupid.

If I am fool, it is, at least, a doubting one; and I envy no one the certainty of his self-approved wisdom.

If you've done what you need to do, you need to go bury yourself, because what else are you going to do? I think that that's where life stops.

We are all racing towards death. No matter how many great, intellectual conclusions we draw during our lives, we know they're all only man-made, like God. I begin to wonder where it all leads. What can you do, except do what you can do as best you know how.

What am I? Do I know? I am a man: quite simply, a 'breather.'

We are all of us resigned to death: it's life we aren't resigned to.

I would love to have faith. When you take God out of the universe, there is no-one taking care us - we are just parcels of meat, collections of atoms - we have a little flowering on Earth, and then we're gone.

Ya know, right now the most important thing in my life is to make sure you understand that, first of all I thank God I'm alive today, and I mean that. I spent too many years of my life thinking that the big party was the whole thing.

I have written too much history to have faith in it; and if anyone thinks I'm wrong, I am inclined to agree with him.