I was born not knowing and have had only a little time to change that here and there.

I’ve never thought about songwriting as a weapon. I’ve only thought about it as a way to help me get through love and loss and sadness and loneliness and growing up.

Capital is money, capital is commodities. By virtue of it being value, it has acquired the occult ability to add value to itself. It brings forth living offspring, or, at the least, lays golden eggs.

I didn’t have nothin‘ going for me… school, home… until I found something I loved, which was music, and that changed everything.

I think the worst part about a breakup sometimes, if one could choose a worst part, would possibly be if you get out of a relationship, and you don’t recognize yourself because you changed a lot about you.

Love is a really scary thing, and you never know what’s going to happen. It’s one of the most beautiful things in life, but it’s one of the most terrifying. It’s worth the fear because you have more knowledge, experience, you learn from people, and you have memories.

And so you touch this limit, something happens and you suddenly can go a little bit further. With your mind power, your determination, your instinct, and the experience as well, you can fly very high.

A lot of us grow up and we grow out of the literal interpretation that we get when we’re children, but we bear the scars all our life. Whether they’re scars of beauty or scars of ugliness, it’s pretty much in the eye of the beholder.

So comes snow after fire, and even dragons have their ending!

We do not know where to look, or what to look for, when something is memorized. We do not know what it means, or what change there is in the nervous system, when a fact is learned. This is a very important problem which has not been solved at all.

The community stagnates without the impulse of the individual. The impulse dies away without the sympathy of the community.

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

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

When you’re finished changing, you’re finished.

Whatever America hopes to bring to pass in the world must first come to pass in the heart of America.

Things are more like they are now than they ever were before.

Man needs difficulties; they are necessary for health.

Time is a sort of river of passing events, and strong is its current; no sooner is a thing brought to sight than it is swept by and another takes its place, and this too will be swept away.

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

When my ancestors came from Africa, they were shackled by our neck, our wrists, and our ankles in steel chains. I’ve turned those steel chains into gold to symbolize the fact that I’m still a slave, only my price tag is higher.

Men who wish to know about the world must learn about it in its particular details.

I grew up where, when a door closed, a window didn’t open. The only thing I had was cracks. I’d do everything to get through those cracks – scratch, claw, bite, push, bleed. Now the opportunity is here. The door is wide open, and it’s as big as a garage.

Character is formed in the stormy billows of the world.

The task of the modern educator is not to cut down jungles, but to irrigate deserts.

I like to change characters and then, slowly I believe the audience treat me as, like an actor who can fight. It’s not like an action star.

Speech is human, silence is divine, yet also brutish and dead: therefore we must learn both arts.

To err is human; to forgive, divine.

I’ve learned that we all change constantly. It’s rare to find that person who is growing with you in the same way at the same time, who encourages you to grow.

Knowledge can be communicated, but not wisdom. One can find it, live it, be fortified by it, do wonders through it, but one cannot communicate and teach it.

You can tell the tree by the fruit it bears. You see it through what the organization is delivering as far as a concrete program. If the tree’s fruit sours or grows brackish, then the time has come to chop it down – bury it and walk over it and plant new seeds.

Before I became a chief minister, I never thought that one day I’d be the chief minister.

If you go back a few hundred years, what we take for granted today would seem like magic – being able to talk to people over long distances, to transmit images, flying, accessing vast amounts of data like an oracle. These are all things that would have been considered magic a few hundred years ago.

A failure is a man who has blundered, but is not able to cash in the experience.

To be able to endure odium is the first art to be learned by those who aspire to power.

I’m not looking to freak people out – eating rodents or bugs. I don’t do that anymore.

Don’t bother about being modern. Unfortunately it is the one thing that, whatever you do, you cannot avoid.

Much learning does not teach understanding.

Ambition is the germ from which all growth of nobleness proceeds.

Knowledge slowly builds up what Ignorance in an hour pulls down.

I never come back home with the same moral character I went out with; something or other becomes unsettled where I had achieved internal peace; some one or other of the things I had put to flight reappears on the scene.

I always felt like there was a certain standard of music that I had to do from the beginning, even when I didn’t have the recognition that I have now.

The unsuccessful person is burdened by learning, and prefers to walk down familiar paths. Their distaste for learning stunts their growth and limits their influence.

A revolution is not a bed of roses.

Every human has four endowments – self awareness, conscience, independent will and creative imagination. These give us the ultimate human freedom… The power to choose, to respond, to change.

Age merely shows what children we remain.

I hate to mention age, but I come from an era when we weren’t consumed by technology and television.

If a man’s wit be wandering, let him study the mathematics.

See, people are watching you. Especially your children. They’re taking in every single thing you do. They are like video cameras with legs. And they are always in the record mode. They learn more from what you do than from what you say.

Travel, in the younger sort, is a part of education; in the elder, a part of experience.

My purpose is to help people look at themselves and begin to shift their concepts. Remember, we are not our country, our race, or religion. We are eternal spirits. Seeing ourselves as spiritual beings without label is a way to transform the world and reach a sacred place for all of humanity.

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

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

All great change in America begins at the dinner table.

The business schools reward difficult complex behavior more than simple behavior, but simple behavior is more effective.

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.

It’s more interesting for me to figure out how to be superior in areas where I’m naive, where I’m a novice.

You must be the change you wish to see in the world.

You learn to know a pilot in a storm.

He that will not apply new remedies must expect new evils; for time is the greatest innovator.

A self-taught man usually has a poor teacher and a worse student.

There are many things that I don’t understand.