My education was the liberty I had to read indiscriminately and all the time, with my eyes hanging out.

The knowledge of God is very far from the love of Him.

One of the very important characteristics of a student is to question. Let the students ask questions.

For a young person, it is almost a sin, or at least a danger, to be too preoccupied with himself; but for the ageing person, it is a duty and a necessity to devote serious attention to himself.

We need enlightenment, not just individually but collectively, to save the planet. We need to awaken ourselves. We need to practice mindfulness if we want to have a future, if we want to save ourselves and the planet.

Let our advance worrying become advance thinking and planning.

Many years ago, I concluded that a few hair shirts were part of the mental wardrobe of every man. The president differs from other men in that he has a more extensive wardrobe.

I was never ignorant, as far as being experienced in classrooms and learning about different subjects and actually soaking it up, so I checked into college for a little bit. I took classes at a community college in West L.A. I took psychology, English, and philosophy.

I don’t watch it, but I know enough to comment on it.

Everybody who makes any kind of policy needs to substitute teach. But you’ve got to be a real teacher. You can’t just go to a couple of classes with the regular teacher there. It is an incredibly hard job.

Because your own strength is unequal to the task, do not assume that it is beyond the powers of man; but if anything is within the powers and province of man, believe that it is within your own compass also.

Life’s too short to hang out with people who aren’t resourceful.

A good day is one where I can not just read a book, but write a review of it. Maybe today I’ll be able to do that. I get for some reason somewhat stronger when the sun starts to go down. Dusk is a good time for me. I’m crepuscular.

O Day of days when we can read! The reader and the book, either without the other is naught.

When your dream is bigger than you are, you only have two choices: give up or get help.

Today is life-the only life you are sure of. Make the most of today. Get interested in something. Shake yourself awake. Develop a hobby. Let the winds of enthusiasm sweep through you. Live today with gusto.

A fool thinks himself to be wise, but a wise man knows himself to be a fool.

There is no man living that can not do more than he thinks he can.

The ideas gained by men before they are twenty-five are practically the only ideas they shall have in their lives.

Books can only reveal us to ourselves, and as often as they do us this service we lay them aside.

Live the life you’ve dreamed.

Marriage is a school itself. Also, having children. Becoming a father changed my whole life. It taught me as if by revelation.

Power over others is weakness disguised as strength.

Without pain, there would be no suffering, without suffering we would never learn from our mistakes. To make it right, pain and suffering is the key to all windows, without it, there is no way of life.

If one is master of one thing and understands one thing well, one has at the same time, insight into and understanding of many things.

There’s nothing you can know that isn’t known.

What you don’t do can be a destructive force.

Education is the period during which you are being instructed by somebody you do not know, about something you do not want to know.

I was enjoying myself writing, because I don’t know what’s going to happen when I take a ride around that corner. You don’t know at all what you’re going to find there. That can be thrilling when you read a book, especially when you’re a kid and you’re reading stories.

If I am walking with two other men, each of them will serve as my teacher. I will pick out the good points of the one and imitate them, and the bad points of the other and correct them in myself.

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 wash my hands of those who imagine chattering to be knowledge, silence to be ignorance, and affection to be art.

In order to arrive at knowledge of the motions of birds in the air, it is first necessary to acquire knowledge of the winds, which we will prove by the motions of water in itself, and this knowledge will be a step enabling us to arrive at the knowledge of beings that fly between the air and the wind.

Do not be in a hurry to succeed. What would you have to live for afterwards? Better make the horizon your goal; it will always be ahead of you.

The only ones among you who will be really happy are those who will have sought and found how to serve.

Each year one vicious habit discarded, in time might make the worst of us good.

Work out your own salvation. Do not depend on others.

Freedom makes a huge requirement of every human being. With freedom comes responsibility. For the person who is unwilling to grow up, the person who does not want to carry his own weight, this is a frightening prospect.

The natural progress of things is for liberty to yield and government to gain ground.

Never mistake motion for action.

The child who desires education will be bettered by it; the child who dislikes it disgraced.

Whether you want to go into music, whether you want to be a lawyer, whether you want to be President of the United States, the bottom line for all of you is that you have got to get your education.

I would always want printed books.

No one even knows one percent of the fabulous history of Man; but thanks to history, we know about occurrences that go beyond the limits of the imaginable.

For a person who grew up in the ’30s and ’40s in the segregated South, with so many doors closed without explanation to me, libraries and books said, ‚Here I am, read me.‘ Over time I have learned I am at my best around books.

Truly it is an evil to be full of faults; but it is a still greater evil to be full of them and to be unwilling to recognize them, since that is to add the further fault of a voluntary illusion.

No man ever prayed heartily without learning something.

We are more thoroughly an enlightened people, with respect to our political interests, than perhaps any other under heaven. Every man among us reads, and is so easy in his circumstances as to have leisure for conversations of improvement and for acquiring information.

I was always told as a child by my mother that you always have to be impeccable, even when you go to bed.

Every man is a consumer, and ought to be a producer. He is by constitution expensive, and needs to be rich.

To accuse others for one’s own misfortunes is a sign of want of education. To accuse oneself shows that one’s education has begun. To accuse neither oneself nor others shows that one’s education is complete.

When you’re older you want to learn from other people.

All wrong-doing arises because of mind. If mind is transformed can wrong-doing remain?

How much easier it is to be critical than to be correct.

First learn the meaning of what you say, and then speak.

No one should be ashamed to admit he is wrong, which is but saying, in other words, that he is wiser today than he was yesterday.

It takes considerable knowledge just to realize the extent of your own ignorance.

One that desires to excel should endeavor in those things that are in themselves most excellent.

It is a most mortifying reflection for a man to consider what he has done, compared to what he might have done.

Become aware of your own insufficiency.

Our character is basically a composite of our habits. Because they are consistent, often unconcious patterns, they constantly, daily, express our character.