The U.N. bureaucracy has grown to elephantine proportions. Now that the Cold War is over, we are asking that elephant to do gymnastics.

So never lose an opportunity of urging a practical beginning, however small, for it is wonderful how often in such matters the mustard-seed germinates and roots itself.

I have made a few mistakes early on that I admit myself, and there have been times when I have gone over the top and done things that you shouldn’t do in international cricket, but that’s how you learn.

Start a part-time business and make as many mistakes as you possibly can while you still have your daytime job.

Experience is something you don’t get until just after you need it.

The Mind that lies fallow but a single Day, sprouts up in Follies that are only to be killed by a constant and assiduous Culture.

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

The community stagnates without the impulse of the individual. The impulse dies away without the sympathy of the community.

Your big opportunity may be right where you are now.

To err is human; to forgive, divine.

My public is growing up just as I am. After all, I’m not 19 anymore and if I stick with the sex bit, who will be paying to see me when I’m 50?

Your pain is the breaking of the shell that encloses your understanding.

We should learn to accept that change is truly the only thing that’s going on always, and learn to ride with it and enjoy it.

The roots of education are bitter, but the fruit is sweet.

The older I grow the more I distrust the familiar doctrine that age brings wisdom.

To remain a credible leader, I must always work first, hardest, and longest on changing myself. This is neither easy nor natural, but it is essential.

Do not let circumstances control you. You change your circumstances.

If boyhood and youth are but vanity, must it not be our ambition to become men?

We were born with a capacity to grow, love, marry, and form families.

I didn’t want to play it boring and safe. I also didn’t want to innovate too much. Second albums, man, they’re even scarier than first ones.

Life is a succession of lessons which must be lived to be understood. All is riddle, and the key to a riddle is another riddle.

There are a lot of ‚chicken Christians.‘ Chickens are generally afraid of life, and they seldom fly or reach their potential in life. And when a storm comes, all they seem to do is flap around the chicken yard, stirring up dirt and running to the chicken house.

Ambition is the germ from which all growth of nobleness proceeds.

With ideas it is like with dizzy heights you climb: At first they cause you discomfort and you are anxious to get down, distrustful of your own powers; but soon the remoteness of the turmoil of life and the inspiring influence of the altitude calm your blood; your step gets firm and sure and you begin to look – for dizzier heights.

The U.N. charter bars the threat of force.

As more airlines consolidated and grew larger and more focused on the bottom line, flying in the U.S. became an awful experience. Despite moves to block our airline from flying, Virgin America began service in August 2007 – with the goal of making flying good again.

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

We cannot expect that all nations will adopt like systems, for conformity is the jailer of freedom and the enemy of growth.

Move fast and break things. Unless you are breaking stuff, you are not moving fast enough.

If you go to work on your goals, your goals will go to work on you. If you go to work on your plan, your plan will go to work on you. Whatever good things we build end up building us.

No one lives long enough to learn everything they need to learn starting from scratch. To be successful, we absolutely, positively have to find people who have already paid the price to learn the things that we need to learn to achieve our goals.

The more you practice, the better you get, the more freedom you have to create.

You will never understand bureaucracies until you understand that for bureaucrats procedure is everything and outcomes are nothing.

When you’re older you want to learn from other people.

Let the path be open to talent.

Once you begin to fall off the track and believe you breathe different air to everyone else, you’re doomed; you’re finished.

No person is your friend who demands your silence, or denies your right to grow.

Milk is for babies. When you grow up you have to drink beer.

No government ever voluntarily reduces itself in size. Government programs, once launched, never disappear. Actually, a government bureau is the nearest thing to eternal life we’ll ever see on this earth!

A man watches his pear tree day after day, impatient for the ripening of the fruit. Let him attempt to force the process, and he may spoil both fruit and tree. But let him patiently wait, and the ripe pear at length falls into his lap.

What’s dangerous is not to evolve.

The world is full of magical things patiently waiting for our wits to grow sharper.

When ignorance gets started it knows no bounds.

Every man who knows how to read has it in his power to magnify himself, to multiply the ways in which he exists, to make his life full, significant and interesting.

The only man who never makes a mistake is the man who never does anything.

The bird fights its way out of the egg. The egg is the world. Whoever will be born must destroy a world.

Men are only as good as their technical development allows them to be.

We’ve got this gift of love, but love is like a precious plant. You can’t just accept it and leave it in the cupboard or just think it’s going to get on by itself. You’ve got to keep watering it. You’ve got to really look after it and nurture it.

Before we acquire great power we must acquire wisdom to use it well.

The feeling is constantly growing on me that I had been the first to hear the greeting of one planet to another.

Every wall is a door.

What I love best in life is new starts.

To keep the business going, you gotta keep it boomin‘.

Being at ease with not knowing is crucial for answers to come to you.

I’m sure a lot of people out there make mistakes.

Capital is money, capital is commodities. By virtue of it being value, it has acquired the occult ability to add value to itself. It brings forth living offspring, or, at the least, lays golden eggs.

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

You can tell the tree by the fruit it bears. You see it through what the organization is delivering as far as a concrete program. If the tree’s fruit sours or grows brackish, then the time has come to chop it down – bury it and walk over it and plant new seeds.

Apply yourself both now and in the next life. Without effort, you cannot be prosperous. Though the land be good, You cannot have an abundant crop without cultivation.

Our treasure lies in the beehive of our knowledge. We are perpetually on the way thither, being by nature winged insects and honey gatherers of the mind.

All life is an experiment. The more experiments you make the better.