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

Real knowledge is to know the extent of one’s ignorance.

The recipe for perpetual ignorance is: Be satisfied with your opinions and content with your knowledge.

One that desires to excel should endeavor in those things that are in themselves most excellent.

Have no fear of perfection – you’ll never reach it.

A BMW can’t take you as far as a diploma.

Men are born ignorant, not stupid. They are made stupid by education.

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.

I spent my childhood in the country and started reading even before going to school. There was nothing else in my life but sketching and reading.

The greatest day in your life and mine is when we take total responsibility for our attitudes. That’s the day we truly grow up.

Don’t just read the easy stuff. You may be entertained by it, but you will never grow from it.

I learned long ago, never to wrestle with a pig. You get dirty, and besides, the pig likes it.

Ignorance of all things is an evil neither terrible nor excessive, nor yet the greatest of all; but great cleverness and much learning, if they be accompanied by a bad training, are a much greater misfortune.

When you face a ‚performance‘ that might provoke the ‚I’m scared‘ response, choose love and approach your opportunity as a chance to dance with God. It’s more fun than ‚Dancing with the Stars!‘

Harvard makes mistakes too, you know. Kissinger taught there.

There’s a victory, and defeat; the first and best of victories, the lowest and worst of defeats which each man gains or sustains at the hands not of another, but of himself.

As far as I’m concerned, I’m a writer who’s writing books, and therefore, I don’t want to die. You’d miss the end of the book wouldn’t you? You can’t die with an unfinished book.

Be as you wish to seem.

For a long time now I have tried simply to write the best I can. Sometimes I have good luck and write better than I can.

Knowledge which is acquired under compulsion obtains no hold on the mind.

I continuously go further and further learning about my own limitations, my body limitation, psychological limitations. It’s a way of life for me.

Only by joy and sorrow does a person know anything about themselves and their destiny. They learn what to do and what to avoid.

I really started writing music to challenge myself, to see what I could write.

I went to a public school through sixth grade, and being good at tests wasn’t cool.

Better is the enemy of good.

You don’t read in your own field. You read in that field when you’re young, so that you can learn.

One of the huge imbalances in life is the disparity between your daily existence, with its routines and habits, and the dream you have within yourself of some extraordinarily satisfying way of living.

Whatever work you do, you think are you doing this for the good of the nation? That’s the basic training. The other basic training is discipline. Your life should be disciplined. The other thing they say is what work you get, do it well.

Timid men prefer the calm of despotism to the tempestuous sea of liberty.

Who questions much, shall learn much, and retain much.

Let us begin by committing ourselves to the truth to see it like it is, and tell it like it is, to find the truth, to speak the truth, and to live the truth.

The tablet is not mainstream. Reading off the screen is not mainstream.

I was a disadvantaged child from a non-educated family, yet I had the advantage of being in the company of great teachers.

We have to confront ourselves. Do we like what we see in the mirror? And, according to our light, according to our understanding, according to our courage, we will have to say yea or nay – and rise!

I know that I’m not the easiest person to live with. The challenge I put on myself is so great that the person I live with feels himself challenged. I bring a lot to bear, and I don’t know how not to.

I don’t think human beings learn anything without desperation. Desperation is a necessary ingredient to learning anything or creating anything. Period. If you ain’t desperate at some point, you ain’t interesting.

Imperfection clings to a person, and if they wait till they are brushed off entirely, they would spin for ever on their axis, advancing nowhere.

When I was young I didn’t care about education, just money and box office.

If liberty means anything at all, it means the right to tell people what they do not want to hear.

Historically, the family has played the primary role in educating children for life, with the school providing supplemental scaffolding to the family.

I think happiness is a goal all of us can agree on. Let’s face it – we all would like to be happy.

I don’t want to look sloppy, because then I feel sloppy.

The human body has two ends on it: one to create with and one to sit on. Sometimes people get their ends reversed. When this happens they need a kick in the seat of the pants.

What destroys more self-confidence than any other educational thing in America is being assigned to some remedial math when you get into some college, and then it’s not taught very well and you end up with this sense of, ‚Hey, I can’t really figure those things out.‘

Oh, God, I struggle with low self-esteem all the time! I think everyone does. I have so much wrong with me, it’s unbelievable!

If you deserve it, go get it.

Your energy, your spirit are important considerations. Feeling petty and frustrated can have reverberating consequences for your ability to think strategically and reach your goals.

The need to be right is the sign of a vulgar mind.

College isn’t the place to go for ideas.

To be ignorant of what occurred before you were born is to remain always a child.

God made you a masterpiece – be blessed, secure, disciplined and equipped.

There is more treasure in books than in all the pirate’s loot on Treasure Island.

To put it bluntly, I seem to have a whole superstructure with no foundation. But I’m working on the foundation.

You learn a lot from traveling around.

If the Great Way perishes there will morality and duty. When cleverness and knowledge arise great lies will flourish. When relatives fall out with one another there will be filial duty and love. When states are in confusion there will be faithful servants.

What I love best in life is new starts.

I don’t read books much.

If you’ve got a talent, protect it.

To know what you know and what you do not know, that is true knowledge.

Human beings can alter their lives by altering their attitudes of mind.

So we know that it’s not enough for us to simply encourage more people to study abroad. We also need to make sure that they can actually afford it.