The ideas gained by men before they are twenty-five are practically the only ideas they shall have in their lives.

I don’t really focus on these things – on what tags are given to me or what people think of me off the field – stuff like that. My main focus is always to do well on the field for the Indian cricket team. When people say good things about me off the field, I am more than happy to accept them.

I don’t spend a lot of time thinking about dying, but I like to think that I’ve – if it did occur – that I would die peacefully and not make too much of a fuss about it.

You can never get enough of what you don’t want.

Every one goes astray, but the least imprudent are they who repent the soonest.

At twelve I looked like a girl of seventeen. My body was developed and shapely. I still wore the blue dress and the blouse the orphanage provided. They made me look like an overgrown lummox.

The time to worrying about flying is when you’re on the ground. When you’re up in the air, it’s too late. No point in worrying about it then.

It has always been my belief that a man should do his best, regardless of how much he receives for his services, or the number of people he may be serving or the class of people served.

We are braver and wiser because they existed, those strong women and strong men… We are who we are because they were who they were. It’s wise to know where you come from, who called your name.

I hope our wisdom will grow with our power, and teach us, that the less we use our power the greater it will be.

Elegance is usually confused with superficiality, fashion, lack of depth. This is a serious mistake: human beings need to have elegance in their actions and in their posture because this word is synonymous with good taste, amiability, equilibrium and harmony.

Some people feel that the world owes them a living.

If you could kick the person in the pants responsible for most of your trouble, you wouldn’t sit for a month.

Many a good hanging prevents a bad marriage.

I’ve never thought about songwriting as a weapon. I’ve only thought about it as a way to help me get through love and loss and sadness and loneliness and growing up.

I grow daily to honour facts more and more, and theory less and less. A fact, it seems to me, is a great thing; a sentence printed, if not by God, then at least by the Devil.

To see things in the seed, that is genius.

Not what I have, but what I do is my kingdom.

The doors of wisdom are never shut.

Basically, when you get to my age, you’ll really measure your success in life by how many of the people you want to have love you actually do love you.

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

If we live a self-directed, self-motivated, self-centered life, always needing to get our own way, then we’re going to be miserable. In fact, many times we believe it’s our problems that are making us unhappy when, in reality, it’s because we’re focused on ourselves!

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

I grew up with my career being thrust upon me. It took me a long time to believe that I could do more than that one aspect of our business.

Well I think a lot of times we’re putting things off and I’m going to do it later. I’m going to break this bad habit or I’m going to pursue this dream or I’m going to treat my spouse better.

Experience keeps a dear school, but fools will learn in no other.

Our best thoughts come from others.

Whenever you give up something, you must replace it with something.

Occasionally, I hanker for the time when I sold more records, but I don’t sit and drool about it. When I do look at early footage of Talking Heads, I realise I was just a wreck.

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.

The bookful blockhead, ignorantly read, With loads of learned lumber in his head.

Men are not prisoners of fate, but only prisoners of their own minds.

Well, I don’t think there’s any need for people to focus on my career.

You learn to know a pilot in a storm.

A man can’t be too careful in the choice of his enemies.

He is a hard man who is only just, and a sad one who is only wise.

It’s like a muscle – if you stop going to the gym or stop running, you get weak. The military teaches you these great values, but we don’t keep up the discipline on our own, and we lose it. So wherever you go, keep that discipline up.

Whether you come from a council estate or a country estate, your success will be determined by your own confidence and fortitude.

Is there anyone so wise as to learn by the experience of others?

Only when the tide goes out do you discover who’s been swimming naked.

That’s the biggest gift I can give anybody: ‚Wake up, be aware of who you are, what you’re doing and what you can do to prevent yourself from becoming ill.‘

It is not God’s will merely that we should be happy, but that we should make ourselves happy.

No man is free who is not master of himself.

Power is the measure of the degree of control you have over circumstances in your life and the actions of the people around you. It is a skill that is developed by a deep understanding of human nature, of what truly motivates people, and of the manipulations necessary for advancement and protection.

Don’t think in the morning. That’s a big mistake that people make. They wake up in the morning and they start thinking. Don’t think. Just execute the plan. The plan is the alarm clock goes off, you get up, you go work out. Get some.

A lot of psychological principles and even medical principles, you see them coming around to what the Bible said hundreds of years ago: a merry heart is good like a medicine.

Choose the life that is most useful, and habit will make it the most agreeable.

Nothing great is created suddenly, any more than a bunch of grapes or a fig. If you tell me that you desire a fig. I answer you that there must be time. Let it first blossom, then bear fruit, then ripen.

You can conquer almost any fear if you will only make up your mind to do so. For remember, fear doesn’t exist anywhere except in the mind.

Let’s just be smart this time. I’m looking for smart.

Self-control means wanting to be effective at some random point in the infinite radiations of my spiritual existence.

I have always had this view about the modern education system: we pay attention to brain development, but the development of warmheartedness we take for granted.

If you are a leader, you should never forget that everyone needs encouragement. And everyone who receives it – young or old, successful or less-than-successful, unknown or famous – is changed by it.

There is a wisdom in this beyond the rules of physic: a man’s own observation what he finds good of and what he finds hurt of is the best physic to preserve health.

Even the knowledge of my own fallibility cannot keep me from making mistakes. Only when I fall do I get up again.

One of the interesting things about having little musical knowledge is that you generate surprising results sometimes; you move to places you wouldn’t if you knew better.

Action seems to follow feeling, but really action and feeling go together; and by regulating the action, which is under the more direct control of the will, we can indirectly regulate the feeling, which is not.

Ideas are the beginning points of all fortunes.

There are three methods to gaining wisdom. The first is reflection, which is the highest. The second is limitation, which is the easiest. The third is experience, which is the bitterest.

Reading is a basic tool in the living of a good life.

We are born weak, we need strength; helpless, we need aid; foolish, we need reason. All that we lack at birth, all that we need when we come to man’s estate, is the gift of education.