I spent two years in the military service, then I trudged around in repertory for quite a while. I somehow wound up at the National Theatre, though, and then I was definitely on my way.

For me, there are two types of people: the young and the experienced.

I get nervous when I don’t get nervous. If I’m nervous I know I’m going to have a good show.

In the revolt against idealism, the ambiguities of the word experience have been perceived, with the result that realists have more and more avoided the word.

I did 20 years in the Navy. I joined the Navy right out of high school and went through Navy boot camp, went to SEAL training, got done with that, and then showed up at a SEAL team, where I did 20 years. That was pretty much my whole adult life.

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

I had given up some youth for knowledge, but my gain was more valuable than the loss.

If you realize all the time what’s kind of wonderful – that is, if we expand our experience into wilder and wilder regions of experience – every once in a while, we have these integrations when everything’s pulled together into a unification, in which it turns out to be simpler than it looked before.

Experience is simply the name we give our mistakes.

Experience without theory is blind, but theory without experience is mere intellectual play.

Good judgment comes from experience, and a lot of that comes from bad judgment.

I’ve 20,000 hours of clinical practice; you’re not naive after the first few thousand. I’ve helped people deal with things that most people can’t imagine.

The man who goes alone can start today; but he who travels with another must wait till that other is ready.

One must ask children and birds how cherries and strawberries taste.

The road to perdition has ever been accompanied by lip service to an ideal.

Flying might not be all plain sailing, but the fun of it is worth the price.

No one can pass through life, any more than he can pass through a bit of country, without leaving tracks behind, and those tracks may often be helpful to those coming after him in finding their way.

I need more sex, OK? Before I die I wanna taste everyone in the world.

There is a time for departure even when there’s no certain place to go.

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

A good traveler has no fixed plans, and is not intent on arriving.

Our treasure lies in the beehive of our knowledge. We are perpetually on the way thither, being by nature winged insects and honey gatherers of the mind.

The best scientist is open to experience and begins with romance – the idea that anything is possible.

A man who has not been in Italy, is always conscious of an inferiority.

In the Church, and in the journey of faith, women have had and still have a special role in opening doors to the Lord.

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

Wealth is the ability to fully experience life.

There are three kinds of men. The one that learns by reading. The few who learn by observation. The rest of them have to pee on the electric fence for themselves.

Hillary doesn’t play. She has more experience and exposure to the presidency than any candidate in our lifetime – yes, more than Barack, more than Bill. So she is absolutely ready to be Commander-in-Chief on day one. And, yes, she happens to be a woman.

It is better to travel well than to arrive.

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.

But although all our knowledge begins with experience, it does not follow that it arises from experience.

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.

Experience is one thing you can’t get for nothing.

Natural abilities are like natural plants, that need pruning by study; and studies themselves do give forth directions too much at large, except they be bounded in by experience.

Studies perfect nature and are perfected still by experience.

Although nature commences with reason and ends in experience it is necessary for us to do the opposite, that is to commence with experience and from this to proceed to investigate the reason.

I am an old man and have known a great many troubles, but most of them never happened.

There comes a time when the mind takes a higher plane of knowledge but can never prove how it got there.

Experience hath shewn, that even under the best forms of government those entrusted with power have, in time, and by slow operations, perverted it into tyranny.

When one has finished building one’s house, one suddenly realizes that in the process one has learned something that one really needed to know in the worst way – before one began.

I may not have gone where I intended to go, but I think I have ended up where I intended to be.

If money is your hope for independence you will never have it. The only real security that a man will have in this world is a reserve of knowledge, experience, and ability.

My role 14 years ago in Richard III – that was the first time I played a bad guy and learned a lot about it – they have all the fun!

Well, I was 29 years old when I came to the United States Senate, and I have learned a lot.

Impart as much as you can of your spiritual being to those who are on the road with you, and accept as something precious what comes back to you from them.

Most of the people that I deal with are human. So I’ve had a lot of experience with that.

I think Himalayan climbers tend to mature fairly late. I think most of the successful Himalayan climbers have ranged from 28 to just over 40, really.

A young man who does not have what it takes to perform military service is not likely to have what it takes to make a living. Today’s military rejects include tomorrow’s hard-core unemployed.

Everything is an open book. I don’t speak on other people’s hardship, but if it happened in my life or something that has been an experience on my particular journey, I’m going to talk about it. That’s what my fan base appreciates the most. I’m universal. You can relate to the things I say or that I go through.

My experience is listen, see, feel – and then think about what you change.

I have had a perfectly wonderful evening, but this wasn’t it.

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.

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

In the studio, we adhere to a strict colour code. Developed over decades, the colour code consists of a finite and precise colour palate… The whole world as we experience it comes to us through the mystic realm of colour.

The 21st century is going to be the American century. Because we lead not only by the example of our power, but by the power of our example. That is the history of the journey of America.

For most of us, wisdom is acquired in the thicket of experience and usually meets us somewhere along the way if we live long enough. But sooner is better than later.

From their experience or from the recorded experience of others (history), men learn only what their passions and their metaphysical prejudices allow them to learn.

Experience is something you don’t get until just after you need it.

Experience is the teacher of all things.