To discover and know has always been a deep tendency of our nature. Can we not recognize it already in caveman?

I was bold in the pursuit of knowledge, never fearing to follow truth and reason to whatever results they led, and bearding every authority which stood in their way.

When you are asked if you can do a job, tell ‚em, ‚Certainly I can!‘ Then get busy and find out how to do it.

You see, I am trying in all my stories to get the feeling of the actual life across – not to just depict life – or criticize it – but to actually make it alive. So that when you have read something by me, you actually experience the thing. You can’t do this without putting in the bad and the ugly as well as what is beautiful.

One of the skills I had to learn and become proficient in is kissing a man. I had never kissed a man. Will Smith did it in his movies, so did Jake Gyllenhaal, and I figured it was my time. So it was me and Steve Carell – fantastic.

All travel has its advantages. If the passenger visits better countries, he may learn to improve his own. And if fortune carries him to worse, he may learn to enjoy it.

I don’t believe in God but I’m very interested in her.

The art of being wise is the art of knowing what to overlook.

We have to continue to learn. We have to be open. And we have to be ready to release our knowledge in order to come to a higher understanding of reality.

Of mankind we may say in general they are fickle, hypocritical, and greedy of gain.

Education must provide the opportunities for self-fulfillment; it can at best provide a rich and challenging environment for the individual to explore, in his own way.

Education can become a self-fulfilling activity, liberating in and of itself.

The sacred rights of mankind are not to be rummaged for among old parchments or musty records. They are written, as with a sunbeam, in the whole volume of human nature, by the hand of the divinity itself; and can never be erased or obscured by mortal power.

The more that you read, the more things you will know. The more that you learn, the more places you’ll go.

What’s dangerous is not to evolve.

The savage in man is never quite eradicated.

Before I look stupid and not know what a word means or how to pronounce it, I’ll stop the whole production: ‚Hey, real quick, guys. Define this word for me. Somebody.‘

To be conscious that you are ignorant of the facts is a great step to knowledge.

I learned from my dog long before I went to Gombe that we weren’t the only beings with personalities. What the chimps did was help me to persuade others.

If men were born free, they would, so long as they remained free, form no conception of good and evil.

What then in the last resort are the truths of mankind? They are the irrefutable errors of mankind.

When one has finished building one’s house, one suddenly realizes that in the process one has learned something that one really needed to know in the worst way – before one began.

The first time you say something, it’s heard. The second time, it’s recognized, and the third time it’s learned.

The history of mankind is the instant between two strides taken by a traveler.

Technique is really personality. That is the reason why the artist cannot teach it, why the pupil cannot learn it, and why the aesthetic critic can understand it.

As we are, so we associate. The good, by affinity, seek the good; the vile, by affinity, the vile. Thus of their own volition, souls proceed into Heaven, into Hell.

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

Find what’s hot, find what’s just opened and then look for the worst review of the week. There is so much to learn from watching a restaurant getting absolutely panned and having a bad experience. Go and see it for yourself.

Those move easiest who have learn’d to dance.

True ease in writing comes from art, not chance, as those move easiest who have learn’d to dance.

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.

Poor is the pupil who does not surpass his master.

Man becomes his most creative during war.

The things most people want to know about are usually none of their business.

The fool wonders, the wise man asks.

The common question that gets asked in business is, ‚why?‘ That’s a good question, but an equally valid question is, ‚why not?‘

Between the ages of fifteen and twenty-four, I must have read a whole library.

Learning without thought is labor lost; thought without learning is perilous.

When one travels around the world, one notices to what an extraordinary degree human nature is the same, whether in India or America, in Europe or Australia.

If you read enough biography and history, you learn how people have dealt successfully or unsuccessfully with similar situations or patterns in the past. It doesn’t give you a template of answers, but it does help you refine the questions you have to ask yourself.

Man is a universe within himself.

If history repeats itself, and the unexpected always happens, how incapable must Man be of learning from experience.

That is never too often repeated, which is never sufficiently learned.

There is always something infinitely mean about other people’s tragedies.

Education is important because it prepares you for life.

‚I wish life was not so short,‘ he thought. ‚Languages take such a time, and so do all the things one wants to know about.‘

There are people who can do all fine and heroic things but one – keep from telling their happiness to the unhappy.

Mankind, when left to themselves, are unfit for their own government.

Knowledge is of two kinds. We know a subject ourselves, or we know where we can find information upon it.

We do not know what the rules of the game are; all we are allowed to do is to watch the playing. Of course, if we watch long enough, we may eventually catch on to a few of the rules. The rules of the game are what we mean by fundamental physics.

The world is all the richer for having a devil in it, so long as we keep our foot upon his neck.

I don’t want to just revolve. I want to evolve. As a man, as a human, as a father, as a lover.

There is nothing so pitiful as a young cynic because he has gone from knowing nothing to believing nothing.

I am just a child who has never grown up. I still keep asking these ‚how‘ and ‚why‘ questions. Occasionally, I find an answer.

Learning is the beginning of wealth. Learning is the beginning of health. Learning is the beginning of spirituality. Searching and learning is where the miracle process all begins.

Imagination is more important than knowledge.

If money is your hope for independence you will never have it. The only real security that a man will have in this world is a reserve of knowledge, experience, and ability.

Even a mistake may turn out to be the one thing necessary to a worthwhile achievement.

You cannot create experience. You must undergo it.

The principle that human nature, in its psychological aspects, is nothing more than a product of history and given social relations removes all barriers to coercion and manipulation by the powerful.

You learn from a conglomeration of the incredible past – whatever experience gotten in any way whatsoever.