Jeff Bridges Quotes

Somewhere deep down there's a decent man in me, he just can't be found.

I'd prefer to be good, but I'm not always. I struggle.

Anyone can identify with those moments in life where circumstances or people inform us that we've strayed from the path of our better nature and intentions. We know what that's like, and we resist it - so as not to feel like we're bad people.

Good people struggle against what's imperfect about them. The people that we call 'bad' people embrace that kind of stuff, embrace the darker side.

We all have them, those parts of us that are the greatest parts of us and the worst parts of us. Sometimes we're put in circumstances and bad choices are made.

This unusual and highly successful species spends a great deal of time examining his higher motives and an equal amount of time ignoring his fundamental ones.

The leader who exercises power with honor will work from the inside out, starting with himself.

I recognize myself to a lesser or greater extent in everything I read, good and bad, and that's part of being a human being if you're honest enough. And obviously the darker parts are the things you don't let control you.

Do not think of your faults, still less of other's faults; look for what is good and strong, and try to imitate it. Your faults will drop off, like dead leaves, when their time comes.

Character isn't something you were born with and can't change, like your fingerprints. It's something you weren't born with and must take responsibility for forming.

Well, any time you do anything good, it's man versus himself, right? That's the art, the challenge.

Every man wants a woman to appeal to his better side, his nobler instincts, and his higher nature - and another woman to help him forget them.

It's very clearly stated in the film: You make your own choices, and what you're always fighting is ego.

Monsters will always exist. There's one inside each of us. But an angel lives there, too. There is no more important agenda than figuring out how to slay one and nurture the other.

There's a victory, and defeat; the first and best of victories, the lowest and worst of defeats which each man gains or sustains at the hands not of another, but of himself.

I've had quite a lot to conquer in myself apart from writing. Not that I've been a pure angel when I come to the end of it.

Who has a harder fight than he who is striving to overcome himself.

Themes of redemption, temptation, and faith don't necessarily apply directly to religion. A lot of people find faith in their lives outside of God and still deal with notions of temptation and redemption that aren't religious.

I am a man of many flaws and contradictions.

I'm not a perfect human being by any stretch of the imagination. But there is always this little voice inside of me that keeps me where I know I need to be.

Self-denial does not belong to religion as characteristic of it; it belongs to human life; the lower nature must always be denied when you are trying to rise to a higher sphere.

If thou has not seen the devil, look at thine own self.

Be kind to all and severe to thyself.

It is always more difficult to fight one's own failings than the power of an adversary.

It is much easier to conquer a country than to conquer ourselves.