Old age, believe me, is a good and pleasant thing. It is true you are gently shouldered off the stage, but then you are given such a comfortable front stall as spectator.

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.

When a distinguished but elderly scientist states that something is possible, he is almost certainly right. When he states that something is impossible, he is very probably wrong.

He who is to be a good ruler must have first been ruled.

A lost battle is a battle one thinks one has lost.

I think that a man should not live beyond the age when he begins to deteriorate, when the flame that lighted the brightest moment of his life has weakened.

Any fool can criticize, condemn and complain – and most fools do.

I think we have to own the fears that we have of each other, and then, in some practical way, some daily way, figure out how to see people differently than the way we were brought up to.

Thou wilt find rest from vain fancies if thou doest every act in life as though it were thy last.

Facts do not speak for themselves. They speak for or against competing theories. Facts divorced from theories or visions are mere isolated curiosities.

To keep your secret is wisdom; but to expect others to keep it is folly.

The truth of things is the chief nutriment of superior intellects.

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.

How prone to doubt, how cautious are the wise!

Getting old is a fascination thing. The older you get, the older you want to get.

It is much easier to be critical than to be correct.

Old age is like a plane flying through a storm. Once you’re aboard, there’s nothing you can do.

There is no such thing as Something for nothing.

A squirrel dying in front of your house may be more relevant to your interests right now than people dying in Africa.

You just want something else that someone else has, but that doesn’t mean what you have isn’t beautiful, because people always want what you have, and you always want what they have – no one is ever 100 per cent like, ‚Yes, I’m the bomb dot com – from head to toe!‘

Nothing is further than earth from heaven, and nothing is nearer than heaven to earth.

The person who doesn’t scatter the morning dew will not comb gray hairs.

Except for the young or very happy, I can’t say I am sorry for anyone who dies.

Misfortune seldom intrudes upon the wise man; his greatest and highest interests are directed by reason throughout the course of life.

For me, there are two types of people: the young and the experienced.

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

All knowledge which ends in words will die as quickly as it came to life, with the exception of the written word: which is its mechanical part.

Experience never errs; it is only your judgments that err by promising themselves effects such as are not caused by your experiments.

When you’re writing a novel, you don’t want the reader to come out of it voting yes or no to some question. Life is more complicated than that. Reality simply consists of different points of view.

Money doesn’t make you happy. I now have $50 million but I was just as happy when I had $48 million.

People don’t realize that we, we meaning people in show business, have the same problems as everyone else. Money doesn’t change that. Fame doesn’t change that. Sometimes that brings on more problems. You know, it’s just a different kind of problems.

Wealth is not his that has it, but his that enjoys it.

Will not a tiny speck very close to our vision blot out the glory of the world, and leave only a margin by which we see the blot? I know no speck so troublesome as self.

I think that we all know what evil is. We have a sense of what’s evil, and certainly killing innocent people is evil. We’re less sure about what is good. There’s sort of good, good enough, could be better – but absolute good is a little harder to define.

Growing old is like being increasingly penalized for a crime you haven’t committed.

A man who says that no patriot should attack the war until it is over… is saying no good son should warn his mother of a cliff until she has fallen.

No such thing as a man willing to be honest – that would be like a blind man willing to see.

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.

The most interesting information comes from children, for they tell all they know and then stop.

I’m rather kind of old school, thinking that when an artist does his work, it’s no longer his… I just see what people make of it.

Remember not only to say the right thing in the right place, but far more difficult still, to leave unsaid the wrong thing at the tempting moment.

The teacher is the one who gets the most out of the lessons, and the true teacher is the learner.

Thought and theory must precede all salutary action; yet action is nobler in itself than either thought or theory.

Necessity never made a good bargain.

I don’t think I would be interested in the climate at all if I had been like everyone else.

What’s the use of happiness? It can’t buy you money.

But Satan now is wiser than of yore, and tempts by making rich, not making poor.

To know, is to know that you know nothing. That is the meaning of true knowledge.

It is far harder to kill a phantom than a reality.

Really I don’t like human nature unless all candied over with art.

All our knowledge begins with the senses, proceeds then to the understanding, and ends with reason. There is nothing higher than reason.

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

Access to the Vedas is the greatest privilege this century may claim over all previous centuries.

Both in thought and in feeling, even though time be real, to realise the unimportance of time is the gate of wisdom.

I’m half living my life between reality and fantasy at all times.

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

One should take good care not to grow too wise for so great a pleasure of life as laughter.

If we are to go forward, we must go back and rediscover those precious values – that all reality hinges on moral foundations and that all reality has spiritual control.

To state the facts frankly is not to despair the future nor indict the past. The prudent heir takes careful inventory of his legacies and gives a faithful accounting to those whom he owes an obligation of trust.

Old age is not a matter for sorrow. It is matter for thanks if we have left our work done behind us.

If all our happiness is bound up entirely in our personal circumstances it is difficult not to demand of life more than it has to give.