Iyanla Vanzant Quotes

I don't like to do something just to prove I can do it.

I'm confident in my intentions and why I'm making music. I'm not making music because I want to be on your TV screen or the cover of your magazine.

I've trained myself not to put too much emphasis on awards, only because I never got into acting to win an award.

I do not suppose I shall be remembered for anything. But I don't think about my work in those terms. It is just as vulgar to work for the sake of posterity as to work for the sake of money.

Popularity isn't an objective in itself. I'm not in this game.

I've never really cared if I was famous for my music. It was just something I had to do.

The things I do, I do for me, not for no publicity stunt or cameras or whatever.

It's not like I go into the studio and say I'm going to try to make music to prove to somebody that I can make music.

Reason is the shepherd trying to corral life's vast flock of wild irrationalities.

Many people tell me what I ought to do and just how I ought to do it, but Few have made me want to do something.

Public reason arguments can be good or bad just like other arguments.

I always try to overachieve. I feel I have something to prove every day.

Pursue the thing inside us and others will help us. Pursue the things outside us and others will compete with us.

Even as the Sun doth not wait for prayers and incantations to rise, but shines forth and is welcomed by all: so thou also wait not for clapping of hands and shouts and praise to do thy duty; nay, do good of thine own accord, and thou wilt be loved like the Sun.

You do what you do out of your private love of the thing itself.

Motivation is an inner force that compels behavior. Your inner drives will propel you further and faster than external perks.

A creative life cannot be sustained by approval, any more than it can be destroyed by criticism.

Look at what your idea of success would be. The more that you take in external motivators, the more it reduces your ultimate satisfaction because it doesn't come from inside.

I'm trying to find things that are extremely challenging or mean something to me deeply.

My whole life I've been a fraud. I'm not exaggerating. Pretty much all I've ever done all the time is try to create a certain impression of me in other people. Mostly to be liked or admired. It's a little more complicated than that, maybe. But when you come right down to it it's to be liked, loved. Admired, approved of, applauded, whatever. You get the idea.

Men, in general, seem to employ their reason to justify prejudices...rather than to root them out.

Being relatively unmoved by rewards gives you the incalculable power to go your own way.

I think sometimes I get carried away, like I'm speaking to an imaginary audience rather than just trying to figure something out for myself. Ideally, I try to balance that - that I'm asking these questions of myself, how does this work, why does this happen, what's going on here.

Humanists recognize that it is only when people feel free to think for themselves, using reason as their guide, that they are best capable of developing values that succeed in satisfying human needs and serving human interests.

The function of education, therefore, is to teach one to think intensively and to think critically. But education which stops with efficiency may prove the greatest menace to society. The most dangerous criminal may be the man gifted with reason, but with no morals.