Theories are always very thin and insubstantial, experience only is tangible.

Now is the winter of our discontent.

It is not sufficient to see and to know the beauty of a work. We must feel and be affected by it.

Look at situations from all angles, and you will become more open.

In the revolt against idealism, the ambiguities of the word experience have been perceived, with the result that realists have more and more avoided the word.

The very phrase ‚foreign affairs‘ makes an Englishman convinced that I am about to treat of subjects with which he has no concern.

I think everyone should experience defeat at least once during their career. You learn a lot from it.

If anyone offers conjectures about the truth of things from the mere possibility of hypotheses, I do not see by what stipulation anything certain can be determined in any science, since one or another set of hypotheses may always be devised which will appear to supply new difficulties.

There is no excellent beauty that hath not some strangeness in the proportion.

Analysis is like a lobotomy. Who wants to have all their edges shaved off?

The worst of madmen is a saint run mad.

Experience teaches only the teachable.

Acting is a question of absorbing other people’s personalities and adding some of your own experience.

Biographies are but the clothes and buttons of the man. The biography of the man himself cannot be written.

There are two bowlers who I think are very tough to play against – Dale Steyn and Morne Morkel.

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

The point – the power to hurt – of all figures lies in the truthfulness of their application.

Experience without theory is blind, but theory without experience is mere intellectual play.

The only real security that a man can have in this world is a reserve of knowledge, experience and ability.

We should not look at terrorism from the nameplates – which group they belong to, what is their geographical location, who are the victims. These individual groups or names will keep changing. Today you are looking at the Taliban or ISIS; tomorrow you might be looking at another name.

Take advantage of the years of pioneering efforts. You might find this boring, as the young want to rush head on, as it were.

Go up in an airplane. Go high enough, and it’s like we don’t even exist.

There have been so many great players that I’ve played with, that I’ve played against over the years.

An economist’s guess is liable to be as good as anybody else’s.

Let blockheads read what blockheads wrote.

When people speak to you about a preventive war, you tell them to go and fight it. After my experience, I have come to hate war.

The good ended happily, and the bad unhappily. That is what fiction means.

At the outset, I want to say that the suggestion that the struggle in South Africa is under the influence of foreigners or communists is wholly incorrect. I have done whatever I did because of my experience in South Africa and my own proudly felt African background, and not because of what any outsider might have said.

As in geology, so in social institutions, we may discover the causes of all past changes in the present invariable order of society.

Corruption is one of the most common reasons I hear in views that criticize aid.

It has not yet become obvious to me that there’s no real problem. I cannot define the real problem; therefore, I suspect there’s no real problem, but I’m not sure there’s no real problem.

Biography lends to death a new terror.

Experience is simply the name we give our mistakes.

Love is an emotion that is based on an opinion of women that is impossible for those who have had any experience with them.

Sitting idle at home is the most painful experience for a footballer.

In spite of his practical ability, some of his experience had petrified into maxims and quotations.

I’m not a macroeconomics person.

I’ve had some ‚riotous excursions of the human spirit‘ alongside the young Sailors and Marines, and it’s time to leave the stage to the young leaders who got their rank the old-fashioned way – they earned their stripes in combat.

I think the materialist conception of history is valid.

Older and wiser voices can help you find the right path, if you are only willing to listen.

The most successful war seldom pays for its losses.

Meeting Franklin Roosevelt was like opening your first bottle of champagne; knowing him was like drinking it.

The left paw has done me well over the years. I’m not a scientist, I’m a martial artist.

Censorship is never over for those who have experienced it. It is a brand on the imagination that affects the individual who has suffered it, forever.

If you young fellows were wise, the devil couldn’t do anything to you, but since you aren’t wise, you need us who are old.

Experience is the child of thought, and thought is the child of action.

Studies perfect nature and are perfected still by experience.

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

In our time political speech and writing are largely the defense of the indefensible.

My life has been long, and believing that life loves the liver of it, I have dared to try many things, sometimes trembling, but daring still.

Industry need not wish.

Political necessities sometime turn out to be political mistakes.

I’ll die a crazy old man!

You have to see and smell and feel the circumstances of people to really understand them.

As a Western, ‚The Magnificent Seven‘ was a pretty good film. I don’t think it was as interesting or as multi-faceted as ‚Seven Samurai.‘

The only source of knowledge is experience.

Living is like tearing through a museum. Not until later do you really start absorbing what you saw, thinking about it, looking it up in a book, and remembering – because you can’t take it in all at once.

The answers you get from literature depend on the questions you pose.

It pays to be obvious, especially if you have a reputation for subtlety.

The economy’s always been the engine for our national security.

Froth at the top, dregs at bottom, but the middle excellent.