We do not know where to look, or what to look for, when something is memorized. We do not know what it means, or what change there is in the nervous system, when a fact is learned. This is a very important problem which has not been solved at all.

I’ve read everything Thomas Wolfe ever wrote; my brother and I memorized whole chapters of ‚You Can’t Go Home Again‘ and ‚Look Homeward, Angel.‘

I learned a long time ago that reality was much weirder than anyone’s imagination.

No problem can withstand the assault of sustained thinking.

In other words, don’t expect to always be great. Disappointments, failures and setbacks are a normal part of the lifecycle of a unit or a company and what the leader has to do is constantly be up and say ‚we have a problem, let’s go and get it‘.

I used to worry about every little thing, trying to figure out every problem. Well, I realize now how foolish that was. I was no more in control of my life than the man on the moon.

The instrument that I never learned how to play was my fans. You know, they are the part of the story that nobody teaches you. I just want to do the right thing; I want to be a voice with them, among them.

My mother knew how to read music and everything. But I just kinda learned off of records. And so, I was listening to records and I’d play ‚em over and over.

Man is the only animal capable of reasoning, though many others possess the faculty of memory and instruction in common with him.

I’m trying my best to keep up with all this new technology, and I surround myself with all these wonderful people that are in the know and kind of help me out with all that.

Intelligence is the ability to adapt to change.

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.

I don’t need therapy. I’m not going to see a therapist; comedy acts as my therapy. I put my problems out there. I talk about them. I talk about everything before anybody has a chance.

It’s very important that we re-learn the art of resting and relaxing. Not only does it help prevent the onset of many illnesses that develop through chronic tension and worrying; it allows us to clear our minds, focus, and find creative solutions to problems.

Our problems are man-made, therefore they may be solved by man. And man can be as big as he wants. No problem of human destiny is beyond human beings.

For most of us, wisdom is acquired in the thicket of experience and usually meets us somewhere along the way if we live long enough. But sooner is better than later.

Treat failure as a lesson on how not to approach achieving a goal, and then use that learning to improve your chances of success when you try again. Failure is only the end if you decide to stop.

There isn’t any formula or method. You learn to love by loving – by paying attention and doing what one thereby discovers has to be done.

Study the past, if you would divine the future.

In order that all men may be taught to speak the truth, it is necessary that all likewise should learn to hear it.

You don’t learn to walk by following rules. You learn by doing, and by falling over.

I got a fancy reputation. During high school, every puzzle that was known to man must have come to me. Every damn, crazy conundrum that people had invented, I knew.

I’d rather learn from one bird how to sing than teach ten thousand stars how not to dance.

Often the hands will solve a mystery that the intellect has struggled with in vain.

The wise are instructed by reason, average minds by experience, the stupid by necessity and the brute by instinct.

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

The way to develop decisiveness is to start right where you are, with the very next question you face.

Much learning does not teach understanding.

I don’t know that my schooling was conducive to wild ideas and creativity, but it gave me discipline, drive. They taught me how to think. I really know how to think.

Nothing in education is so astonishing as the amount of ignorance it accumulates in the form of inert facts.

Men are born ignorant, not stupid. They are made stupid by education.

Hold those things that tell your history and protect them. During slavery, who was able to read or write or keep anything? The ability to have somebody to tell your story to is so important. It says: ‚I was here. I may be sold tomorrow. But you know I was here.‘

Experience is simply the name we give our mistakes.

The problem isn’t that Johnny can’t read. The problem isn’t even that Johnny can’t think. The problem is that Johnny doesn’t know what thinking is; he confuses it with feeling.

Good thinkers always prime the pump of ideas. They always look for things to get the thinking process started, because what you put in always impacts what comes out.

Especially for those of us who lived in single cells, you had the time to sit down and think, and we discovered that sitting down just to think is one of the best ways of keeping yourself fresh and able, to be able to address the problems facing you, and you had the opportunity, also, of examining your past.

No one can pass through life, any more than he can pass through a bit of country, without leaving tracks behind, and those tracks may often be helpful to those coming after him in finding their way.

While I thought that I was learning how to live, I have been learning how to die.

After the 9/11 apocalypse happened in New York City, people, particularly New Yorkers, who breathed in the ash, or saw the results of that, have a tendency to keep seeing echoes and having flashbacks to it.

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

There are four Powers: memory and intellect, desire and covetousness. The two first are mental and the others sensual. The three senses: sight, hearing and smell cannot well be prevented; touch and taste not at all.

It is a miracle that curiosity survives formal education.

You can’t learn in school what the world is going to do next year.

Maybe I should say that memory interests me a great deal, because I think we all tell stories of our lives to ourselves as well as to other people. Well, women do, anyway. Women do this a lot. And I think when men get older, they do this too, but maybe in slightly different terms.

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.

Memory… is the diary that we all carry about with us.

The one thing about the business of entertainment is that you have to learn patience.

I had a lot of trouble with engineers, because their whole background is learning from a functional point of view, and then learning how to perform that function.

On the ‚Star,‘ you were forced to learn to write a simple declarative sentence. This is useful to anyone. Newspaper work will not harm a young writer and could help him if he gets out of it in time.

Example is leadership.

I’m not really book-smart.

Every movie I make teaches me something. That’s why I keep making them.

It is our moral obligation to give every child the very best education possible.

A learned blockhead is a greater blockhead than an ignorant one.

I had been told from school onwards that the best definition of a human being was man the tool-maker – yet I had just watched a chimp tool-maker in action. I remember that day as vividly as if it was yesterday.

Training is everything. The peach was once a bitter almond; cauliflower is nothing but cabbage with a college education.

Every man’s memory is his private literature.

Nothing has really happened until it has been recorded.

My education was the liberty I had to read indiscriminately and all the time, with my eyes hanging out.

The drawing teacher has this problem of communicating how to draw by osmosis and not by instruction, while the physics teacher has the problem of always teaching techniques, rather than the spirit, of how to go about solving physical problems.

If, after I depart this vale, you ever remember me and have thought to please my ghost, forgive some sinner and wink your eye at some homely girl.