Against my will, in the course of my travels, the belief that everything worth knowing was known at Cambridge gradually wore off. In this respect my travels were very useful to me.

There are three things extremely hard: steel, a diamond, and to know one’s self.

Perception often lags behind reality, and I can say from experience that the vast majority of public officials in Louisiana are much better than our reputation holds us to be.

Getting money is not all a man’s business: to cultivate kindness is a valuable part of the business of life.

Difficulties mastered are opportunities won.

You know how advice is. You only want it if it agrees with what you wanted to do anyway.

For Africa to me… is more than a glamorous fact. It is a historical truth. No man can know where he is going unless he knows exactly where he has been and exactly how he arrived at his present place.

People who don’t know the true character of God – who don’t believe He is merciful, gracious and slow to anger – can never have a close, personal, intimate relationship with Him.

I always was a rich person because money’s not related to happiness.

I am more afraid of my own heart than of the pope and all his cardinals. I have within me the great pope, Self.

It isn’t that they can’t see the solution. It is that they can’t see the problem.

There are more men ennobled by study than by nature.

Education must provide the opportunities for self-fulfillment; it can at best provide a rich and challenging environment for the individual to explore, in his own way.

For centuries, theologians have been explaining the unknowable in terms of the-not-worth-knowing.

If you do not tell the truth about yourself you cannot tell it about other people.

Listening to and understanding our inner sufferings will resolve most of the problems we encounter.

The moment you think you understand a great work of art, it’s dead for you.

I admire Ralph Nader and Denis Kucinich very much, and insofar as they bring up issues and carry out an educational and organisational function – that’s important, and fine, and I support it.

I was born with a great gift, and sometimes with that comes a destructive streak.

You lose your individuality a huge amount when you have no money, and I certainly had that experience.

A University should be a place of light, of liberty, and of learning.

The first man gets the oyster, the second man gets the shell.

In fact men will fight for a superstition quite as quickly as for a living truth – often more so, since a superstition is so intangible you cannot get at it to refute it, but truth is a point of view, and so is changeable.

I was bold in the pursuit of knowledge, never fearing to follow truth and reason to whatever results they led, and bearding every authority which stood in their way.

Little girls are cute and small only to adults. To one another they are not cute. They are life-sized.

I’ll stay in Memphis.

Science investigates; religion interprets. Science gives man knowledge which is power; religion gives man wisdom which is control.

I am what libraries and librarians have made me, with little assistance from a professor of Greek and poets.

In almost every area of human endeavor, the practice improves over time. That hasn’t been the case for teaching.

Talent develops in quiet places, character in the full current of human life.

It is dangerous for mortal beauty, or terrestrial virtue, to be examined by too strong a light. The torch of Truth shows much that we cannot, and all that we would not, see.

One often contradicts an opinion when what is uncongenial is really the tone in which it was conveyed.

If children grew up according to early indications, we should have nothing but geniuses.

You know when you’re young and you see a play in high school, and the guys all have gray in their hair and they’re trying to be old men and they have no idea what that’s like? It’s just that stupid the other way around.

No matter what, people grow. If you chose not to grow, you’re staying in a small box with a small mindset. People who win go outside of that box. It’s very simple when you look at it.

I must govern the clock, not be governed by it.

I don’t think any country is perfect. It’s our responsibility to do the best we can do to change the things we don’t like. I think that’s part of social responsibility, and everybody is going to do that in their own way.

The mind of a 19-year-old is very different from the mind of a 26-year-old. You grow. You get into better relationships. You experience more, meet more people, better people. But when you’re in a dark hole at an earlier point in your life – you write about the mindset you’re in at that moment.

It suddenly struck me that that tiny pea, pretty and blue, was the Earth. I put up my thumb and shut one eye, and my thumb blotted out the planet Earth. I didn’t feel like a giant. I felt very, very small.

Much learning does not teach understanding.

He who fights with monsters might take care lest he thereby become a monster. Is not life a hundred times too short for us to bore ourselves?

Within us there is someone who knows everything, wills everything, does everything better than we ourselves.

Women always excel men in that sort of wisdom which comes from experience. To be a woman is in itself a terrible experience.

The time when most of you should withdraw into yourself is when you are forced to be in a crowd.

Most people never run far enough on their first wind to find out they’ve got a second.

Study the past, if you would divine the future.

He that humbleth himself wishes to be exalted.

One thing is certain in business. You and everyone around you will make mistakes.

Little minds have little worries, big minds have no time for worries.

Any reading not of a vicious species must be a good substitute for the amusements too apt to fill up the leisure of the labouring classes.

Judge a man by his questions rather than his answers.

Those that know, do. Those that understand, teach.

An empowered organisation is one in which individuals have the knowledge, skill, desire, and opportunity to personally succeed in a way that leads to collective organisational success.

There is a great deal of unmapped country within us which would have to be taken into account in an explanation of our gusts and storms.

It’s normal for human beings to identify with their own separate self. The problem is that we get caught in that notion of ourself as a separate individual and caught in that individual self’s agenda.

The old believe everything, the middle-aged suspect everything, the young know everything.

You must live for another if you wish to live for yourself.

Homework’s hard. Especially math. My kids joke with me. They tell me they have homework. I say, ‚Okay.‘ And then I sit down and they say, ‚It’s math.‘ ‚No! Not math! English, history, anything!‘

The price one pays for pursuing any profession, or calling, is an intimate knowledge of its ugly side.

I do not know what I may appear to the world; but to myself, I seem to have been only like a boy playing on the seashore, and diverting myself now and then in finding a smoother pebble or prettier shell than ordinary, while the great ocean of truth lay all undiscovered before me.

Now, you lose something in your life, or you come into a conflict, and there’s gonna come a time that you’re gonna know: There was a reason for that. And at the end of your life, all the things you thought were periods, they turn out to be commas. There was never a full stop in any of it.