Next to knowing when to seize an opportunity, the most important thing in life is to know when to forego an advantage.

Your philosophy determines whether you will go for the disciplines or continue the errors.

Our existence is beyond our explanation, whether we believe in God or we have religion or we’re atheist. Our existence is beyond our understanding. No one has an answer.

Take time to deliberate, but when the time for action has arrived, stop thinking and go in.

Don’t throw stones at your neighbors if your own windows are glass.

Having nothing, nothing can he lose.

My parents had us in church every Sunday, every Wednesday. It was more of a tradition at that point; I didn’t have a personal relationship with the Lord until I went to the altar call one Sunday, and the youth pastor told us to make a decision for ourselves.

As a leader, you have to have the ability to assimilate new information and understand that there might be a different view.

First, how do we give everyone a fair shot at opportunity and security in this new economy? Second, how do we make technology work for us, and not against us – especially when it comes to solving urgent challenges like climate change? Third, how do we keep America safe and lead the world without becoming its policeman?

Without football, my life is worth nothing.

We learn from experience that men never learn anything from experience.

The doorstep to the temple of wisdom is a knowledge of our own ignorance.

Really I feel less keen about the Army every day. I think the Church would suit me better.

It’s easier to aim to please and say what others want to hear than to form an opinion and fight for it, even if it means taking a risk or losing your job.

The pessimist sees difficulty in every opportunity. The optimist sees the opportunity in every difficulty.

All theory, dear friend, is gray, but the golden tree of life springs ever green.

Since the team understands that the leader is de facto in charge, in that respect, a leader has nothing to prove. But in another respect, a leader has everything to prove: Every member of the team must develop the trust and confidence that their leader will exercise good judgment, remain calm, and make the right decisions when it matters most.

The ideas I stand for are not mine. I borrowed them from Socrates. I swiped them from Chesterfield. I stole them from Jesus. And I put them in a book. If you don’t like their rules, whose would you use?

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.

This life, which had been the tomb of his virtue and of his honour, is but a walking shadow; a poor player, that struts and frets his hour upon the stage, and then is heard no more: it is a tale told by an idiot, full of sound and fury, signifying nothing.

We live in a bewildering world.

The die is cast.

Wisdom alone is the science of other sciences.

Necessity never made a good bargain.

Life is not long, and too much of it must not pass in idle deliberation how it shall be spent.

People are generally better persuaded by the reasons which they have themselves discovered than by those which have come in to the mind of others.

Since we cannot know all that there is to be known about anything, we ought to know a little about everything.

I think if we didn’t contradict ourselves, it would be awfully boring. It would be tedious to be alive.

Everybody should have a fair deal; everybody should have the chance to life in this world. If we were evolved as human beings, we would hopefully be able to alleviate suffering in the world.

An intelligent man is sometimes forced to be drunk to spend time with his fools.

People who don’t like my work say that the connections seem too arbitrary. But that’s how life is.

Confront a corpse at least once. The absolute absence of life is the most disturbing and challenging confrontation you will ever have.

Early to bed and early to rise makes a man healthy, wealthy and wise.

Life every man holds dear; but the dear man holds honor far more precious dear than life.

Many foxes grow gray but few grow good.

I never make conscious decisions.

Necessity dispenseth with decorum.

Our truest life is when we are in dreams awake.

Finality is not the language of politics.

There were the questions of what kind of First Lady I would be, what issues would I focus on. Those were the questions that were being pounded on me through the campaign. A lot of times, I wondered what in the world Barack was even getting us into.

I’m not afraid to die, I just don’t want to be there when it happens.

We should not fret for what is past, nor should we be anxious about the future; men of discernment deal only with the present moment.

I work very hard, but when God opens that door for you – when life opens that door for you, I should say – I think it’s important to be giving, to return the love back.

Wisdom begins in wonder.

If I have the chance to say something, I will say it – but that doesn’t obligate me to always say something, or to shed light on every problem, as if I were a lawmaker.

To live is so startling it leaves little time for anything else.

A little learning is a dangerous thing, but we must take that risk because a little is as much as our biggest heads can hold.

Without health life is not life; it is only a state of langour and suffering – an image of death.

The pursuit of truth and beauty is a sphere of activity in which we are permitted to remain children all our lives.

I’ve noticed a terrible thing, which is I will agree to anything if it’s far enough in the future.

If you tell the truth, you don’t have to remember anything.

At twenty years of age the will reigns; at thirty, the wit; and at forty, the judgment.

In war, you win or lose, live or die – and the difference is just an eyelash.

And were an epitaph to be my story I’d have a short one ready for my own. I would have written of me on my stone: I had a lover’s quarrel with the world.

In a magazine, one can get – from cover to cover – 15 to 20 different ideas about life and how to live it.

He who learns but does not think, is lost! He who thinks but does not learn is in great danger.

I’m not afraid of death, but I’m in no hurry to die. I have so much I want to do first.

Men must be taught as if you taught them not, and things unknown proposed as things forgot.

This has always been my life and no one else’s, and that’s how it’s always been since the day I came in it.

If a nation expects to be ignorant and free, in a state of civilization, it expects what never was and never will be.

To conquer fear is the beginning of wisdom.