A man who carries a cat by the tail learns something he can learn in no other way.

Failure is simply the opportunity to begin again, this time more intelligently.

We have to live today by what truth we can get today and be ready tomorrow to call it falsehood.

Do not bite at the bait of pleasure, till you know there is no hook beneath it.

The fact that a man is a newspaper reporter is evidence of some flaw of character.

I wish I could give you a lot of advice, based on my experience of winning political debates. But I don’t have that experience. My only experience is at losing them.

I don’t think I’ve ever worked so hard on something, but working on Macintosh was the neatest experience of my life. Almost everyone who worked on it will say that. None of us wanted to release it at the end. It was as though we knew that once it was out of our hands, it wouldn’t be ours anymore.

My mother used to tell me man gives the award, God gives the reward. I don’t need another plaque.

Sir, my concern is not whether God is on our side; my greatest concern is to be on God’s side, for God is always right.

First and last, what is demanded of genius is love of truth.

If you read enough biography and history, you learn how people have dealt successfully or unsuccessfully with similar situations or patterns in the past. It doesn’t give you a template of answers, but it does help you refine the questions you have to ask yourself.

He that won’t be counseled can’t be helped.

They must often change, who would be constant in happiness or wisdom.

A man loves the meat in his youth that he cannot endure in his age.

Falsehood is a perennial spring.

I have visited Japan several times and have always been shown wonderful hospitality.

For everything you have missed, you have gained something else, and for everything you gain, you lose something else.

I’ve lived in good climate, and it bores the hell out of me. I like weather rather than climate.

A witty saying proves nothing.

Knowledge of the past and of the places of the earth is the ornament and food of the mind of man.

It is better, of course, to know useless things than to know nothing.

Common sense is the collection of prejudices acquired by age eighteen.

Knowledge which is divorced from justice, may be called cunning rather than wisdom.

Find what’s hot, find what’s just opened and then look for the worst review of the week. There is so much to learn from watching a restaurant getting absolutely panned and having a bad experience. Go and see it for yourself.

My lectures, based on Islamic teachings, were on various subjects. Some of the titles were, ‚The Intoxication of Life,‘ ‚The Purpose of Life,‘ ‚The Real Cause of Man’s Distress,‘ ‚The Journey to the Goal in Life,‘ and, one of my favorites, ‚The Heart of Man.‘ They contained important insights that spoke to something deep inside me.

It is impossible to live a pleasant life without living wisely and well and justly. And it is impossible to live wisely and well and justly without living a pleasant life.

It is impossible to love and to be wise.

Happy is the hearing man; unhappy the speaking man.

Intelligence is the ability to adapt to change.

I never let schooling interfere with my education.

Jesters do often prove prophets.

An empty stomach is not a good political adviser.

God has his plans and his reasons. Sometimes we are supposed to go through things so that we learn lessons.

It is a miracle that curiosity survives formal education.

To be idle is a short road to death and to be diligent is a way of life; foolish people are idle, wise people are diligent.

Sooner or later we’re all someone’s dog.

Virtue is like a rich stone, best plain set.

It is not when truth is dirty, but when it is shallow, that the lover of knowledge is reluctant to step into its waters.

When I did A Soldier’s Story, I was very young and green and thought I knew everything-now I know I know everything!

When you have shot one bird flying you have shot all birds flying. They are all different and they fly in different ways but the sensation is the same and the last one is as good as the first.

Start with what is right rather than what is acceptable.

We should take care not to make the intellect our goal; it has, of course, powerful muscles, but no personality.

Nothing is permanent in this wicked world – not even our troubles.

Experience has shown, and a true philosophy will always show, that a vast, perhaps the larger portion of the truth arises from the seemingly irrelevant.

Don’t throw stones at your neighbors if your own windows are glass.

Man, so long as he remains free, has no more constant and agonizing anxiety than find as quickly as possible someone to worship.

Life is a series of natural and spontaneous changes. Don’t resist them – that only creates sorrow. Let reality be reality. Let things flow naturally forward in whatever way they like.

Integrity without knowledge is weak and useless, and knowledge without integrity is dangerous and dreadful.

I decided that it was not wisdom that enabled poets to write their poetry, but a kind of instinct or inspiration, such as you find in seers and prophets who deliver all their sublime messages without knowing in the least what they mean.

It’s my old girl that advises. She has the head. But I never own to it before her. Discipline must be maintained.

A wise man is cured of ambition by ambition itself; his aim is so exalted that riches, office, fortune and favour cannot satisfy him.

Not when truth is dirty, but when it is shallow, does the enlightened man dislike to wade into its waters.

One thing I’ve always loved about the culture at Microsoft is there is nobody who is tougher on us, in terms of what we need to learn and do better, than the people in the company itself. You can walk down these halls, and they’ll tell you, ‚We need to do usability better, push this or that frontier.‘

Growing old is like being increasingly penalized for a crime you haven’t committed.

By gnawing through a dike, even a rat may drown a nation.

Wrinkles should merely indicate where smiles have been.

The foolish man conceives the idea of ‚self.‘ The wise man sees there is no ground on which to build the idea of ‚self;‘ thus, he has a right conception of the world and well concludes that all compounds amassed by sorrow will be dissolved again, but the truth will remain.

He who is not just is severe, he who is not wise is sad.

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

A child wants things to be a certain way. When you get to be an adult, you just understand that some people are good, some are not, and you can’t be naive.

Where ignorance is our master, there is no possibility of real peace.