It put our energies to sleep and made visionaries of us – dreamers and indolent… It is good to begin life poor; it is good to begin life rich – these are wholesome; but to begin it prospectively rich! The man who has not experienced it cannot imagine the curse of it.

There is always inequality in life. Some men are killed in a war and some men are wounded and some men never leave the country. Life is unfair.

To be radical, an empiricism must neither admit into its constructions any element that is not directly experienced, nor exclude from them any element that is directly experienced.

A tomb now suffices him for whom the whole world was not sufficient.

Some cause happiness wherever they go; others whenever they go.

When people speak to you about a preventive war, you tell them to go and fight it. After my experience, I have come to hate war.

I wrote my first song at 12 and remember someone asking, ‚What were you going through at 12 that you could write about?‘ I get what you’re saying, but 11, 12, 13 were the hardest years of my life. You learn everything. You learn how horrible things feel.

Getting older is no problem. You just have to live long enough.

In everyone’s life, at some time, our inner fire goes out. It is then burst into flame by an encounter with another human being. We should all be thankful for those people who rekindle the inner spirit.

We shall see but a little way if we require to understand what we see.

The basic fact about human existence is not that it is a tragedy, but that it is a bore. It is not so much a war as an endless standing in line.

Instead of comparing our lot with that of those who are more fortunate than we are, we should compare it with the lot of the great majority of our fellow men. It then appears that we are among the privileged.

Mars is the only place in the solar system where it’s possible for life to become multi-planetarian.

You know, people talk about this being an uncertain time. You know, all time is uncertain. I mean, it was uncertain back in – in 2007, we just didn’t know it was uncertain. It was – uncertain on September 10th, 2001. It was uncertain on October 18th, 1987, you just didn’t know it.

The courage we desire and prize is not the courage to die decently, but to live manfully.

For many men, the acquisition of wealth does not end their troubles, it only changes them.

Nobody is as powerful as we make them out to be.

Wealth consists not in having great possessions, but in having few wants.

The more sand has escaped from the hourglass of our life, the clearer we should see through it.

Science is not everything, but science is very beautiful.

You know, if you are kind of rich, the best thing is that you don’t have to think about money. The best thing you can buy with money is freedom, time. I don’t know how much I earn a year. I have no idea. I don’t know how much I pay in taxes.

People think, because we’re young, we aren’t complex, but that’s not true. We deal with life and love and broken hearts in the same way a woman a few years older might.

Every time there has been an effort by the Haitian people to overcome the misery and poverty that comes from 200 years of bitter attacks, really bitter, the U.S. steps in and blocks it.

I’ve made an odd discovery. Every time I talk to a savant I feel quite sure that happiness is no longer a possibility. Yet when I talk with my gardener, I’m convinced of the opposite.

We are all born for love. It is the principle of existence, and its only end.

Each day is a little life: every waking and rising a little birth, every fresh morning a little youth, every going to rest and sleep a little death.

Judging whether life is or is not worth living amounts to answering the fundamental question of philosophy.

Next to the young, I suppose the very old are the most selfish.

Life’s a bit like mountaineering – never look down.

There can be no greater error than to expect, or calculate, upon real favors from nation to nation. It is an illusion which experience must cure, which a just pride ought to discard.

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.

So vast is art, so narrow human wit.

Our care should not be to have lived long as to have lived enough.

There is a very fine line between loving life and being greedy for it.

A pessimist is one who makes difficulties of his opportunities and an optimist is one who makes opportunities of his difficulties.

When a team takes ownership of its problems, the problem gets solved. It is true on the battlefield, it is true in business, and it is true in life.

By the time you’ve reached your sixties, you do know that one day you will die, and knowing that is at least the beginning of wisdom.

A lot of people in our industry haven’t had very diverse experiences. So they don’t have enough dots to connect, and they end up with very linear solutions without a broad perspective on the problem. The broader one’s understanding of the human experience, the better design we will have.

Voyagers discover that the world can never be larger than the person that is in the world; but it is impossible to foresee this, it is impossible to be warned.

I don’t think that faith, whatever you’re being faithful about, really can be scientifically explained. And I don’t want to explain this whole life business through truth, science. There’s so much mystery. There’s so much awe.

Remember happiness doesn’t depend upon who you are or what you have; it depends solely on what you think.

As capitalism falters, the rich move their money out of the country, violence increases, and politicians promising prosperity are elected.

Wars of nations are fought to change maps. But wars of poverty are fought to map change.

The greatest wealth is to live content with little.

When I was young I thought that money was the most important thing in life; now that I am old I know that it is.

Everybody could be an entrepreneur, but very few will become very rich entrepreneurs.

Everything isn’t political.

Do everything as in the eye of another.

Do not be very upright in your dealings for you would see by going to the forest that straight trees are cut down while crooked ones are left standing.

What difference does it make how much you have? What you do not have amounts to much more.

If a man loses his reverence for any part of life, he will lose his reverence for all of life.

As a musician and a songwriter, it is an act of the ego to believe that other people might be interested in your point of view. But it is usually an empathetic nature that gets you going in the first place.

I do remember how it was to be poor. I do remember that in my early years, we had to grow and raise all of our food, even our animals. And I remember in my early life, we didn’t even have electricity. So it was very, very hard times then.

Nature will bear the closest inspection. She invites us to lay our eye level with her smallest leaf, and take an insect view of its plain.

There is no love of life without despair of life.

Poverty is the worst form of violence.

God reigns when we take a liberal view, when a liberal view is presented to us.

Man wants to live, but it is useless to hope that this desire will dictate all his actions.

Youth is wasted on the young.

It is the spectator, and not life, that art really mirrors.

What is normal? Normal was yesterday. If you lose a leg, one day you’re hopping around on one leg, so you know the difference.