Men are wise in proportion, not to their experience, but to their capacity for experience.

Meeting Franklin Roosevelt was like opening your first bottle of champagne; knowing him was like drinking it.

All experience is an arch, to build upon.

Associate with men of good quality if you esteem your own reputation; for it is better to be alone than in bad company.

Bad news isn’t wine. It doesn’t improve with age.

All life is an experiment. The more experiments you make the better.

By gnawing through a dike, even a rat may drown a nation.

A wise man is cured of ambition by ambition itself; his aim is so exalted that riches, office, fortune and favour cannot satisfy him.

Youth cannot know how age thinks and feels. But old men are guilty if they forget what it was to be young.

Seek not the favor of the multitude; it is seldom got by honest and lawful means. But seek the testimony of few; and number not voices, but weigh them.

There is no sin except stupidity.

The best advice comes from people who don’t give advice.

I have many regrets, and I’m sure everyone does. The stupid things you do, you regret… if you have any sense, and if you don’t regret them, maybe you’re stupid.

Cunning… is but the low mimic of wisdom.

The last suit that you wear, you don’t need any pockets.

A mother takes twenty years to make a man of her boy, and another woman makes a fool of him in twenty minutes.

The first forty years of life give us the text; the next thirty supply the commentary on it.

I think that there is never an indispensable leader, you know? I think that there is a time with dignity that one needs to leave.

Time discovers truth.

The first step, my son, which one makes in the world, is the one on which depends the rest of our days.

To ‚choose‘ dogma and faith over doubt and experience is to throw out the ripening vintage and to reach greedily for the Kool-Aid.

As I grow older, I pay less attention to what men say. I just watch what they do.

It has been my experience that folks who have no vices have very few virtues.

Trust men and they will be true to you; treat them greatly and they will show themselves great.

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

Wise kings generally have wise counselors; and he must be a wise man himself who is capable of distinguishing one.

He who seeks does not find, but he who does not seek will be found.

Sweet is the memory of past troubles.

Good fame is like fire; when you have kindled you may easily preserve it; but if you extinguish it, you will not easily kindle it again.

The object of opening the mind, as of opening the mouth, is to shut it again on something solid.

Truth is so obscure in these times, and falsehood so established, that, unless we love the truth, we cannot know it.

There should be a point to movies. Sure, you’re giving people a diversion from the cold world for a bit, but at the same time, you pass on some facts and rules and maybe a little bit of wisdom.

Education is the best friend. An educated person is respected everywhere. Education beats the beauty and the youth.

The important thing is that men should have a purpose in life. It should be something useful, something good.

My range is limited.

Give every man thy ear, but few thy voice.

Men should be either treated generously or destroyed, because they take revenge for slight injuries – for heavy ones they cannot.

Knowledge rests not upon truth alone, but upon error also.

Success or failure depends more upon attitude than upon capacity successful men act as though they have accomplished or are enjoying something. Soon it becomes a reality. Act, look, feel successful, conduct yourself accordingly, and you will be amazed at the positive results.

I’m sure I’ve changed my mind about something. Inevitably, when we grow up – as we get more experience and wiser. Well, I’ve changed my mind about some food that I didn’t like when I was young.

The truest wisdom is a resolute determination.

The successful men I admired all built their bodies.

I had a much better view with the halo than I expected.

Men do not learn much from the lessons of history and that is the most important of all the lessons of history.

So near is falsehood to truth that a wise man would do well not to trust himself on the narrow edge.

There is no such thing as justice in the abstract; it is merely a compact between men.

I’ve lived in good climate, and it bores the hell out of me. I like weather rather than climate.

I’m too busy acting like I’m not Naive. I’ve seen it all, I was here first.

The superior man does not, even for the space of a single meal, act contrary to virtue. In moments of haste, he cleaves to it. In seasons of danger, he cleaves to it.

You shall know the truth, and the truth shall make you mad.

It is wrong to assume that men of immense wealth are always happy.

I prefer tongue-tied knowledge to ignorant loquacity.

As long as you live, keep learning how to live.

I had therefore to remove knowledge, in order to make room for belief.

In every society some men are born to rule, and some to advise.

Old age has deformities enough of its own. It should never add to them the deformity of vice.

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

Skill is the unified force of experience, intellect and passion in their operation.

To be idle is a short road to death and to be diligent is a way of life; foolish people are idle, wise people are diligent.

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

A capacity, and taste, for reading gives access to whatever has already been discovered by others.