It’s a question of whether we’re going to go forward into the future, or past to the back.

In the business world, the rearview mirror is always clearer than the windshield.

The best place to find God is in a garden. You can dig for him there.

The belief that the world is getting worse, that we can’t solve extreme poverty and disease, isn’t just mistaken. It is harmful.

Dread, which is closely related to fear, steals the ability to enjoy ordinary life and makes people anxious about the future. It keeps them from looking forward to the next day, the next month, or the next decade.

The reason men oppose progress is not that they hate progress, but that they love inertia.

If the critics are right that I’ve made all my decisions based on polls, then I must not be very good at reading them.

I hope my own children never have to fight a war.

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.

My mum passing away wasn’t funny, but that funeral and what I went through, the things that happened, looking back at it, there were funny moments. You have to be strong enough to look back at it, to sit and assess the situation.

Life levels all men. Death reveals the eminent.

‚Thursday‘ is a conceptual album. Whatever that situation was, I spent the whole album focusing on that situation.

Conscience is a mother-in-law whose visit never ends.

Now I realize that from ’72 through to about ’76, I was the ultimate rock star. I couldn’t have been more rock star.

I love my friends and my past, and it’s made me who I am.

My biographers… would like to have my time at the court almost complete before they finish the book. We decided… to flip the order.

The function of wisdom is to discriminate between good and evil.

For Africa to me… is more than a glamorous fact. It is a historical truth. No man can know where he is going unless he knows exactly where he has been and exactly how he arrived at his present place.

The press, the machine, the railway, the telegraph are premises whose thousand-year conclusion no one has yet dared to draw.

You have to just make the choices you make in life. I made the choices I made because I believed they were right for me.

Healthy discontent is the prelude to progress.

If we could do high-speed rail in California just half a notch above what they’ve done on the Shanghai line in China, and if we had a straight path from L.A. to San Francisco, as well as the milk run, at least that would be progress.

Many people will have nothing at the end of their working lives.

It takes a long time to bring the past up to the present.

I’ve got a pen and I’ve got a phone – and I can use that pen to sign executive orders and take executive actions and administrative actions that move the ball forward.

Why love if losing hurts so much? I have no answers anymore; only the life I have lived. The pain now is part of the happiness then.

A ‚No‘ uttered from the deepest conviction is better than a ‚Yes‘ merely uttered to please, or worse, to avoid trouble.

We are time’s subjects, and time bids be gone.

Youth is a blunder; Manhood a struggle, Old Age a regret.

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.

The measure of a life, after all, is not its duration, but its donation.

The artists of the past who impressed me were the ones who really focused their work.

It is not possible for civilization to flow backwards while there is youth in the world. Youth may be headstrong, but it will advance it allotted length.

Without deviation progress is not possible.

It is said that the present is pregnant with the future.

I do not look upon these United States as a finished product. We are still in the making.

People always fear change. People feared electricity when it was invented, didn’t they? People feared coal, they feared gas-powered engines… There will always be ignorance, and ignorance leads to fear. But with time, people will come to accept their silicon masters.

I think one of the basic reasons men make good friends is that they can make up their minds quickly.

Everyone now knows how to find the meaning of life within himself. But mankind wasn’t always so lucky. Less than a century ago, men and women did not have easy access to the puzzle boxes within them.

Forgiveness is not a feeling – it’s a decision we make because we want to do what’s right before God. It’s a quality decision that won’t be easy and it may take time to get through the process, depending on the severity of the offense.

In the history of medicine, it is not always the great scientist or the learned doctor who goes forward to discover new fields, new avenues, new ideas.

The pause between the errors and trials of the day and the hopes of the night.

I have thought there was some advantage even in death, by which we mingle with the herd of common men.

Every man gotta right to decide his own destiny.

All who think cannot but see there is a sanction like that of religion which binds us in partnership in the serious work of the world.

My parents pretty much realized that I would do whatever I wanted, and that was it, really.

Thank God, I never was cheerful. I come from the happy stock of the Mathers, who, as you remember, passed sweet mornings reflecting on the goodness of God and the damnation of infants.

If you think the United States has stood still, who built the largest shopping center in the world?

If you want the present to be different from the past, study the past.

Wisdom stands at the turn in the road and calls upon us publicly, but we consider it false and despise its adherents.

I delayed my father’s funeral because of cricket.

I’m working on my life story. I’m not decided if it’s going to be a musical or a movie with music in it.

Love to everybody who is out there progressing and taking things to the next level.

My father had died, and very swiftly, too, of cancer of the esophagus. He was 79. I am 61. In whatever kind of a ‚race‘ life may be, I have very abruptly become a finalist.

The future doesn’t belong to the fainthearted; it belongs to the brave.

All experience is an arch, to build upon.

A good decision is based on knowledge and not on numbers.

I don’t think it’s a good idea to plan to sell a company.

Poor is the pupil who does not surpass his master.

Those who govern, having much business on their hands, do not generally like to take the trouble of considering and carrying into execution new projects. The best public measures are therefore seldom adopted from previous wisdom, but forced by the occasion.

The credit of advancing science has always been due to individuals and never to the age.