Our problem right now is that we’re so specialized that if the lights go out, there are a huge number of people who are not going to know what to do. But within every dystopia there’s a little utopia.

I do not believe there is a problem in this country or the world today which could not be settled if approached through the teaching of the Sermon on the Mount.

If you aren’t in the moment, you are either looking forward to uncertainty, or back to pain and regret.

Observe constantly that all things take place by change, and accustom thyself to consider that the nature of the Universe loves nothing so much as to change the things which are, and to make new things like them.

I’m very careful about saying who would and wouldn’t go to heaven. I don’t know.

We are afraid to care too much, for fear that the other person does not care at all.

Knowledge is knowing that we cannot know.

Being on tour is like being in limbo. It’s like going from nowhere to nowhere.

Remember that life’s big changes rarely give advance warning.

What affects men sharply about a foreign nation is not so much finding or not finding familiar things; it is rather not finding them in the familiar place.

Most of the time I spend when I get up in the morning is trying to figure out what is going to happen.

Part of the reason there’s an injunction to the truth, for example, is that if you’re in a circumstance of extreme uncertainty, your best weapon, let’s say, or your best tool or your best defense is the truth, because it keeps things simpler.

If two smart, intelligent, clever guys sit together on a table, and you both want the same, where can be the problem? We all want to be successful.

If I’ve got a problem with one of my clients that needs to get solved, guess what I’m going to do? I’m going to call them up, and I’m going to say, ‚Hey, here’s what’s going on. This is the situation. This thing went sideways. I didn’t expect it. Now it’s going to take me some more time to get you what you need.‘ But I’m going to do that upfront.

No sensible decision can be made any longer without taking into account not only the world as it is, but the world as it will be.

I don’t need therapy. I’m not going to see a therapist; comedy acts as my therapy. I put my problems out there. I talk about them. I talk about everything before anybody has a chance.

Progress is impossible without change, and those who cannot change their minds cannot change anything.

No weapon has ever settled a moral problem. It can impose a solution but it cannot guarantee it to be a just one.

Life’s short. Anything could happen, and it usually does, so there is no point in sitting around thinking about all the ifs, ands and buts.

Once you’ve grown to accept something and it becomes part of the system you’ve inherited, you don’t even notice it any longer.

As long as you blame someone or something else – something outside you that’s bigger than you are – as the source of your problems, the problems won’t get solved.

And no, we don’t know where it will lead. We just know there’s something much bigger than any of us here.

U2’s best work has always been when we didn’t know what we’re doing.

If you’re teaching today what you were teaching five years ago, either the field is dead or you are.

I don’t have a magic formula for prioritizing the world’s problems.

A wet spot on the floor kind of put a scare in myself, so you never know inside those lines what might happen.

We cannot wish for that we know not.

We always live in an uncertain world. What is certain is that the United States will go forward over time.

Do not keep saying to yourself, if you can possibly avoid it, ‚But how can it be like that?‘ because you will get ‚down the drain,‘ into a blind alley from which nobody has yet escaped. Nobody knows how it can be like that.

Human beings will be happier – not when they cure cancer or get to Mars or eliminate racial prejudice or flush Lake Erie but when they find ways to inhabit primitive communities again. That’s my utopia.

Players who are not from the U.K. have to get used to the winds. I have to adapt my style as a result as well. Often, you are forced to keep things simple.

I will carry on writing, to be sure. But I don’t know if I would want to publish again after Harry Potter.

No great deed is done by falterers who ask for certainty.

The Green Revolution focused on the big three – maize, rice and wheat – and the Green Revolution did not adapt the big three to African conditions, other than South Africa, as much as they should have.

I had noticed that many of these successful people, historical and contemporary, shared certain common traits. They had a way of thinking that was exceptionally fluid; they could adapt to almost any circumstance; when confronted with problems, they could look at them from novel perspectives and solve them.

If there’s one thing that’s certain in business, it’s uncertainty.

Every possession and every happiness is but lent by chance for an uncertain time, and may therefore be demanded back the next hour.

I always wonder when it was that I was embraced.

Some scientists believe climate change is the cause of unprecedented melting of the North Pole, and that effects these very uncertain weather patterns. I think we should listen to those scientists and experts.

One thing is sure. We have to do something. We have to do the best we know how at the moment… If it doesn’t turn out right, we can modify it as we go along.

For other nations, utopia is a blessed past never to be recovered; for Americans it is just beyond the horizon.

Sometimes if you got a problem deep rooted in your life, it takes a little bit of time to overcome it in that area.

A hustler has to deal with danger and risk. It’s part of the game. You cannot control it all, nor would you want to. Chaos, unknown factors are not something to be anxious about.

When men are easy in their circumstances, they are naturally enemies to innovations.

I don’t know where I’m going from here, but I promise it won’t be boring.

We are ready for any unforeseen event that may or may not occur.

Risk comes from not knowing what you’re doing.

Cinema reflects culture and there is no harm in adapting technology, but not at the cost of losing your originality.

If a problem cannot be solved, enlarge it.

Certain though I am – and ever more certain – that I must press on in life as though Christ awaited me at the term of the universe, at the same time I feel no special assurance of the existence of Christ. Believing is not seeing. As much as anyone, I imagine, I walk in the shadows of faith.

Changes are not unusual – I mean, most movies, when they release them, they make changes. But somehow, when I make the slightest change, everybody thinks it’s the end of the world.

There is nothing more difficult to take in hand, more perilous to conduct, or more uncertain in its success, than to take the lead in the introduction of a new order of things.

I hate cameras. They are so much more sure than I am about everything.

I’ll be more enthusiastic about encouraging thinking outside the box when there’s evidence of any thinking going on inside it.

If one does not know to which port one is sailing, no wind is favorable.

Personal columnists are jackals and no jackal has been known to live on grass once he had learned about meat – no matter who killed the meat for him.

Most of us are about as eager to be changed as we were to be born, and go through our changes in a similar state of shock.

Any good piece of material like Shakespeare ought to be open to reinterpretation.

I don’t spend my time pontificating about high-concept things; I spend my time solving engineering and manufacturing problems.

I set up situations that involve abandoning control and finding out what happens.

Now we have a problem in making our power credible, and Vietnam is the place.