I had been told from school onwards that the best definition of a human being was man the tool-maker – yet I had just watched a chimp tool-maker in action. I remember that day as vividly as if it was yesterday.

Is it not rather what we expect in men, that they should have numerous strands of experience lying side by side and never compare them with each other?

We are often raised as dependents then given over to teachers. It’s experience and exploration that can transform us and lead to mastery.

Experience teaches only the teachable.

Censorship is never over for those who have experienced it. It is a brand on the imagination that affects the individual who has suffered it, forever.

Eight years involved with the nuclear industry have taught me that when nothing can possible go wrong and every avenue has been covered, then is the time to buy a house on the next continent.

I’ll die a crazy old man!

It’s a great, great experience to finally get the reception that you know you rightfully deserve.

It was the experience of mystery – even if mixed with fear – that engendered religion.

Have you ever noticed that anybody driving slower than you is an idiot, and anyone going faster than you is a maniac?

Many a trip continues long after movement in time and space have ceased.

All through Latin America, there’s sharp condemnation of the criminal atrocities of Sept. 11. But it’s qualified by the observation that although these are horrible atrocities, they are not unfamiliar.

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.

Modern travelling is not travelling at all; it is merely being sent to a place, and very little different from becoming a parcel.

God cannot be realized through the intellect. Intellect can lead one to a certain extent and no further. It is a matter of faith and experience derived from that faith.

There are many harsh lessons to be learned from the gambling experience, but the harshest one of all is the difference between having Fun and being Smart.

The wise are instructed by reason, average minds by experience, the stupid by necessity and the brute by instinct.

Beauty is all very well at first sight; but who ever looks at it when it has been in the house three days?

I’ve had some ‚riotous excursions of the human spirit‘ alongside the young Sailors and Marines, and it’s time to leave the stage to the young leaders who got their rank the old-fashioned way – they earned their stripes in combat.

Older and wiser voices can help you find the right path, if you are only willing to listen.

We participate in a tragedy; at a comedy we only look.

There is no object so large but that at a great distance from the eye it does not appear smaller than a smaller object near.

I mean, if you didn’t get it or if you didn’t feel like you enjoyed it, sometimes that experience can change.

A journey is a person in itself; no two are alike. And all plans, safeguards, policing, and coercion are fruitless. We find that after years of struggle that we do not take a trip; a trip takes us.

It has been my observation that most people get ahead during the time that others waste.

Old age: the crown of life, our play’s last act.

The nature of the human mind is such that unless it is stimulated by images of things acting upon it from without, all remembrance of them passes easily away.

The life of the dead is placed in the memory of the living.

My observation is that whenever one person is found adequate to the discharge of a duty… it is worse executed by two persons, and scarcely done at all if three or more are employed therein.

I never saw a discontented tree. They grip the ground as though they liked it, and though fast rooted they travel about as far as we do.

The statesman’s duty is to bridge the gap between his nation’s experience and his vision.

To go to the field and train and understand when days are less, that’s where experience helps.

Acting is a question of absorbing other people’s personalities and adding some of your own experience.

We cannot be more sensitive to pleasure without being more sensitive to pain.

Chavez, who came out of the ranks of the Venezuelan Army, is methodical and tireless. I have observed him over the course of 17 years, since his first visit to Cuba. He is an extremely humanitarian and law-abiding person; he has never taken revenge on anybody.

I’m a human being and I fall in love and sometimes I don’t have control of every situation.

If you want to go somewhere, it is best to find someone who has already been there.

The stories are not autobiographical, but they’re personal in that way. I seem to know only the things that I’ve learned. Probably some things through observation, but what I feel I know surely is personal.

See any detour as an opportunity to experience new things.

My experience with power, you can maintain it, or you get it taken from you. You get you some newfound power and go crazy, and it get taken from you quick.

I think that I do feel that my nature is to express what this self, this particular self at this time, experiences in the world. And that is so organic – I use this metaphor a lot but I’ll use it again – it’s like a pine tree producing pine cones, or a blackberry bush producing blackberries – it’s just what happens with this being, now.

There is something curiously boring about somebody else’s happiness.

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.

I think history is collective memories. In writing, I’m using my own memory, and I’m using my collective memory.

A leader who confines his role to his people’s experience dooms himself to stagnation; a leader who outstrips his people’s experience runs the risk of not being understood.

Experience teaches us that it is much easier to prevent an enemy from posting themselves than it is to dislodge them after they have got possession.

See first, think later, then test. But always see first. Otherwise, you will only see what you were expecting. Most scientists forget that.

It’s not a real adventure when you have to pay for it.

We do not know what the rules of the game are; all we are allowed to do is to watch the playing. Of course, if we watch long enough, we may eventually catch on to a few of the rules. The rules of the game are what we mean by fundamental physics.

I love to watch times change!

I’ve been around longer than most of my fans have been alive.

The drama and the trauma of the relationship you have when you’re 16 can mirror the one you have when you’re 26. Life repeats itself.

If some people have the belief or view that the Dalai Lama has some miracle power, that’s totally nonsense. I am just one human being.

Some old men, continually praise the time of their youth. In fact, you would almost think that there were no fools in their days, but unluckily they themselves are left as an example.

Nobody can write the life of a man but those who have eat and drunk and lived in social intercourse with him.

I’m not afraid to look like a big, hairy, smelly, foreign devil in Tokyo, though I do my best not to, I really do.

I see drawings and pictures in the poorest of huts and the dirtiest of corners.

I had rather have a fool to make me merry than experience to make me sad and to travel for it too!

No traveler, whether a tree lover or not, will ever forget his first walk in a sugar-pine forest. The majestic crowns approaching one another make a glorious canopy, through the feathery arches of which the sunbeams pour, silvering the needles and gilding the stately columns and the ground into a scene of enchantment.

The power of accurate observation is commonly called cynicism by those who have not got it.

If you hold a cat by the tail you learn things you cannot learn any other way.