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

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

When I think over what I have said, I envy dumb people.

The manual for WordStar, the most popular word-processing program, is 400 pages thick. To write a novel, you have to read a novel – one that reads like a mystery to most people. They’re not going to learn slash q-z any more than they’re going to learn Morse code. That is what Macintosh is all about.

Upon the subjects of which I have treated, I have spoken as I have thought. I may be wrong in regard to any or all of them; but, holding it a sound maxim that it is better only sometimes to be right than at all times to be wrong, so soon as I discover my opinions to be erroneous, I shall be ready to renounce them.

No man is so foolish but he may sometimes give another good counsel, and no man so wise that he may not easily err if he takes no other counsel than his own. He that is taught only by himself has a fool for a master.

Great grief does not of itself put an end to itself.

Every time you think the problem is ‚out there,‘ that very thought is the problem.

Studies serve for delight, for ornaments, and for ability.

I’m not intelligent. I’m not arrogant. I’m just like the people who read my books. I used to have a jazz club, and I made the cocktails and I made the sandwiches. I didn’t want to become a writer – it just happened.

What we live by we die by.

I write from my soul. This is the reason that critics don’t hurt me, because it is me. If it was not me, if I was pretending to be someone else, then this could unbalance my world, but I know who I am.

Without tact you can learn nothing.

I believe that it is better to tell the truth than a lie. I believe it is better to be free than to be a slave. And I believe it is better to know than to be ignorant.

One thing is certain in business. You and everyone around you will make mistakes.

The way up and the way down are one and the same.

Vanity is great motivation, to be fair.

Jesters do often prove prophets.

It’s not an experiment if you know it’s going to work.

Man’s greatness lies in his power of thought.

Those who forget good and evil and seek only to know the facts are more likely to achieve good than those who view the world through the distorting medium of their own desires.

Old age is just a record of one’s whole life.

All the truth in the world adds up to one big lie.

When a person cannot deceive himself the chances are against his being able to deceive other people.

I got my first computer in the 6th grade or so. As soon as I got it, I was interested in finding out how it worked and how the programs worked and then figuring out how to write programs at just deeper and deeper levels within the system.

Study men, not historians.

I believe in God, but not as one thing, not as an old man in the sky. I believe that what people call God is something in all of us. I believe that what Jesus and Mohammed and Buddha and all the rest said was right. It’s just that the translations have gone wrong.

One must still have chaos in oneself to be able to give birth to a dancing star.

If a man will begin with certainties, he shall end in doubts, but if he will content to begin with doubts, he shall end in certainties.

Only those are fit to live who are not afraid to die.

All that mankind has done, thought or been: it is lying as in magic preservation in the pages of books.

We do not yet possess ourselves, and we know at the same time that we are much more.

I play piano and ukulele, and I taught myself those things just because I wanted to play them.

I will govern my life and thoughts as if the whole world were to see the one and read the other, for what does it signify to make anything a secret to my neighbor, when to God, who is the searcher of our hearts, all our privacies are open?

Truth is the beginning of every good to the gods, and of every good to man.

The impossible often has a kind of integrity which the merely improbable lacks.

Error is acceptable as long as we are young; but one must not drag it along into old age.

Leaders who fail to prune their pride will meet demise. That’s not a guess, it’s a guarantee. With pride, it’s not a matter of ‚if‘ we will fall, but ‚when.‘ There are no exceptions.

For one swallow does not make a summer, nor does one day; and so too one day, or a short time, does not make a man blessed and happy.

We all want progress, but if you’re on the wrong road, progress means doing an about-turn and walking back to the right road; in that case, the man who turns back soonest is the most progressive.

The paradox of education is precisely this – that as one begins to become conscious one begins to examine the society in which he is being educated.

Just as the wave cannot exist for itself, but is ever a part of the heaving surface of the ocean, so must I never live my life for itself, but always in the experience which is going on around me.

Remember you are just an extra in everyone else’s play.

Nothing I can say or devise, and nothing anybody else can say or devise, is going to be perfect.

It is a characteristic of wisdom not to do desperate things.

At 50, I began to know who I was. It was like waking up to myself.

We rarely confide in those who are better than we are.

Error is always more busy than truth.

Have you ever thought how humiliating and distressing it was to be placed upon a sphere? For friendship it is a boon never to be able to be further apart than the antipodes. But suppose that you are leaving together to go on and on; it is impossible. To go beyond a certain point is to return to where you began.

Shall I not have intelligence with the earth? Am I not partly leaves and vegetable mould myself.

I’m one of the world’s most self-conscious people. I really have to struggle.

Experience is the teacher of all things.

What difference does it make to the dead, the orphans, and the homeless, whether the mad destruction is wrought under the name of totalitarianism or the holy name of liberty or democracy?

There is nothing permanent except change.

We are cups, constantly and quietly being filled. The trick is, knowing how to tip ourselves over and let the beautiful stuff out.

Moderation is the center wherein all philosophies, both human and divine, meet.

Nothing exists from whose nature some effect does not follow.

We choose our joys and sorrows long before we experience them.

People need motivation to do anything. I don’t think human beings learn anything without desperation.

If a person doesn’t change, there’s something really wrong with him.

The proactive approach to a mistake is to acknowledge it instantly, correct and learn from it.