I’d rather learn from one bird how to sing than teach 10,000 stars how not to dance.

They who dream by day are cognizant of many things which escape those who dream only by night.

One of the most important things you learn from the Internet is that there is no ‚them‘ out there. It’s just an awful lot of ‚us.‘

He who despairs of the human condition is a coward, but he who has hope for it is a fool.

Love sought is good, but given unsought, is better.

Oh, the difference between nearly right and exactly right.

Work is love made visible. And if you cannot work with love but only with distaste, it is better that you should leave your work and sit at the gate of the temple and take alms of those who work with joy.

There wasn’t much as a kid that inspired me in what I did as an adult, but I was always very interested in what motivates people, and in telling stories and building things.

Find a beautiful piece of art. If you fall in love with Van Gogh or Matisse or John Oliver Killens, or if you fall love with the music of Coltrane, the music of Aretha Franklin, or the music of Chopin – find some beautiful art and admire it, and realize that that was created by human beings just like you, no more human, no less.

Anger and intolerance are the enemies of correct understanding.

I love the sea.

Dreams are the touchstones of our character.

I learned from my dog long before I went to Gombe that we weren’t the only beings with personalities. What the chimps did was help me to persuade others.

Two things control men’s nature, instinct and experience.

The spirit is there in every boy; it has to be discovered and brought to light.

Only by going alone in silence, without baggage, can one truly get into the heart of the wilderness. All other travel is mere dust and hotels and baggage and chatter.

The happiest women, like the happiest nations, have no history.

An egg today is better than a hen to-morrow.

When you’re drowning, you don’t say ‚I would be incredibly pleased if someone would have the foresight to notice me drowning and come and help me,‘ you just scream.

Thaw with her gentle persuasion is more powerful than Thor with his hammer. The one melts, the other breaks into pieces.

As the eagle was killed by the arrow winged with his own feather, so the hand of the world is wounded by its own skill.

I was inspired to spend an entire year – my 65th year – reading, researching, and meditating on Lao-tzu’s messages, practicing them and ultimately writing down these insights as I felt Lao-tzu wanted us to know them.

It has been said that politics is the second oldest profession. I have learned that it bears a striking resemblance to the first.

I play piano and ukulele, and I taught myself those things just because I wanted to play them.

The manual for WordStar, the most popular word-processing program, is 400 pages thick. To write a novel, you have to read a novel – one that reads like a mystery to most people. They’re not going to learn slash q-z any more than they’re going to learn Morse code. That is what Macintosh is all about.

When I found somebody who I fell in love with, it made me feel different than I felt the rest of the day. It was electrifying. That’s what inspired the ‚Off to the Races‘ melodies. That’s one of the times when you’re feeling electrified by someone else and they make you happy to be alive.

No excellent soul is exempt from a mixture of madness.

Who sows virtue reaps honor.

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.

It is not the man who has too little, but the man who craves more, that is poor.

A prudent question is one-half of wisdom.

As a general rule, the most successful man in life is the man who has the best information.

Surely our job while we’re here on Earth is to learn about the world, not to create parallel universes.

And so our mothers and grandmothers have, more often than not anonymously, handed on the creative spark, the seed of the flower they themselves never hoped to see – or like a sealed letter they could not plainly read.

Our moments of inspiration are not lost though we have no particular poem to show for them; for those experiences have left an indelible impression, and we are ever and anon reminded of them.

I hope our wisdom will grow with our power, and teach us, that the less we use our power the greater it will be.

The secret of getting ahead is getting started.

When ideas fail, words come in very handy.

Nature is ever at work building and pulling down, creating and destroying, keeping everything whirling and flowing, allowing no rest but in rhythmical motion, chasing everything in endless song out of one beautiful form into another.

Music is not math. It’s science. You keep mixing the stuff up until it blows up on you, or it becomes this incredible potion.

All truths are easy to understand once they are discovered; the point is to discover them.

The idea that is not dangerous is not worthy of being called an idea at all.

Proverbs are always platitudes until you have personally experienced the truth of them.

Happiness is a ball after which we run wherever it rolls, and we push it with our feet when it stops.

I learned a great many years ago that in a fight between husband and wife, a third party should never get between the woman’s skillet and the man’s ax-helve.

I would have a workshop attached to every school, and one hour a day given up to the teaching of simple decorative arts. It would be a golden hour to the children.

All the rivers run into the sea; yet the sea is not full.

Every secret of a writer’s soul, every experience of his life, every quality of his mind is written large in his works.

Man becomes his most creative during war.

A leader is one who knows the way, goes the way, and shows the way.

Leadership and learning are indispensable to each other.

There is nothing to writing. All you do is sit down at a typewriter and bleed.

Each generation imagines itself to be more intelligent than the one that went before it, and wiser than the one that comes after it.

I learned from the guys before me – Bill Cosby, Eddie Murphy, Chris Rock, Richard Pryor, just to name a few. These are guys that let it all hang out. What they lived is what they took to the stage.

Nature has always had more force than education.

I used to consider the listener. But now I’m in a space where, if I’m not inspired, I can’t really do the music. I can’t feel it.

Clearly older women and especially older women who have led an active life or elder women who successfully maneuver through their own family life have so much to teach us about sharing, patience, and wisdom.

Growing up I’ve watched Lewis and aspired to have some of his attributes, mainly his speed. His raw pace is probably the best of everyone on the whole grid, so there are bits you want from different drivers.

Science is the father of knowledge, but opinion breeds ignorance.

No one should be ashamed to admit he is wrong, which is but saying, in other words, that he is wiser today than he was yesterday.

All that is gold does not glitter, not all those who wander are lost; the old that is strong does not wither, deep roots are not reached by the frost.