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

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

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 Himalayan climbers tend to mature fairly late. I think most of the successful Himalayan climbers have ranged from 28 to just over 40, really.

Precepts or maxims are of great weight; and a few useful ones on hand do more to produce a happy life than the volumes we can’t find.

Whoever doesn’t know it must learn and find by experience that ‚a quiet conscience makes one strong!‘

Fame will go by and, so long, I’ve had you, fame. If it goes by, I’ve always known it was fickle. So at least it’s something I experience, but that’s not where I live.

If you realize all the time what’s kind of wonderful – that is, if we expand our experience into wilder and wilder regions of experience – every once in a while, we have these integrations when everything’s pulled together into a unification, in which it turns out to be simpler than it looked before.

You can know or not know how a car runs and still enjoy riding in a car.

It’s been said that astronomy is a humbling and, I might add, a character-building experience.

I don’t claim to be knowledgeable about theology. Most of my knowledge comes out of my experience and the lessons in the Bible. Every Sunday I’m home I teach 45 minutes and we boiled them down to one page for the new book, ‚Through the Year with Jimmy Carter.‘

Experience which was once claimed by the aged is now claimed exclusively by the young.

Eight years involved with the nuclear industry have taught me that when nothing can possible go wrong and every avenue has been covered, then is the time to buy a house on the next continent.

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

A life spent making mistakes is not only more honorable, but more useful than a life spent doing nothing.

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.

Youth cannot know how age thinks and feels. But old men are guilty if they forget what it was to be young.

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

I spent two years in the military service, then I trudged around in repertory for quite a while. I somehow wound up at the National Theatre, though, and then I was definitely on my way.

I am quite serious when I say that I do not believe there are, on the whole earth besides, so many intensified bores as in these United States. No man can form an adequate idea of the real meaning of the word, without coming here.

The experience of democracy is like the experience of life itself-always changing, infinite in its variety, sometimes turbulent and all the more valuable for having been tested by adversity.

It put our energies to sleep and made visionaries of us – dreamers and indolent… It is good to begin life poor; it is good to begin life rich – these are wholesome; but to begin it prospectively rich! The man who has not experienced it cannot imagine the curse of it.

The use of travelling is to regulate imagination by reality, and instead of thinking how things may be, to see them as they are.

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 never errs; it is only your judgments that err by promising themselves effects such as are not caused by your experiments.

The best scientist is open to experience and begins with romance – the idea that anything is possible.

Flying might not be all plain sailing, but the fun of it is worth the price.

I once did a three-hour interview with Radio Oxford only to be told the microphone hadn’t picked me up.

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.

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

Being a good husband is like being a good stand-up comic – you need ten years before you can even call yourself a beginner.

In the studio, we adhere to a strict colour code. Developed over decades, the colour code consists of a finite and precise colour palate… The whole world as we experience it comes to us through the mystic realm of colour.

Experience does not err. Only your judgments err by expecting from her what is not in her power.

Smell is a potent wizard that transports you across thousands of miles and all the years you have lived.

So I’ve seen life as one long learning process. And if I see – you know, if I fly on somebody else’s airline and find the experience is not a pleasant one, which it wasn’t in – 21 years ago, then I’d think, well, you know, maybe I can create the kind of airline that I’d like to fly on.

I’m no longer just a candidate. I’m the President. I know what it means to send young Americans into battle, for I have held in my arms the mothers and fathers of those who didn’t return. I’ve shared the pain of families who’ve lost their homes, and the frustration of workers who’ve lost their jobs.

He who is to be a good ruler must have first been ruled.

Modern travelling is not travelling at all; it is merely being sent to a place, and very little different from becoming a parcel.

Old age: the crown of life, our play’s last act.

Lying in bed would be an altogether perfect and supreme experience if only one had a colored pencil long enough to draw on the ceiling.

And so you touch this limit, something happens and you suddenly can go a little bit further. With your mind power, your determination, your instinct, and the experience as well, you can fly very high.

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.

When you are young you tend to do so many things that are not needed. When you get experience, you know what exactly what works for you and you tend to do things that you want.

I had rather have a fool to make me merry than experience to make me sad and to travel for it too!

I don’t care about age. Nor do I care about those who do not accept the science. I don’t have as much experience, and therefore I listen more. But I also have the right to express my opinion, no matter my age.

We cannot be more sensitive to pleasure without being more sensitive to pain.

I do understand it’s not easy to run an I-league club. I have been part of many and I know the scene.

Men who have reached and passed forty-five, have a look as if waiting for the secret of the other world, and as if they were perfectly sure of having found out the secret of this.

Context and memory play powerful roles in all the truly great meals in one’s life.

I wish I had known when I was in the White House what I know now about the Third World.

I’ve actually taken companies public, I’ve actually busted companies, I’ve actually gone broke.

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

Experience is the teacher of all things.

When I did A Soldier’s Story, I was very young and green and thought I knew everything-now I know I know everything!

Adventure is worthwhile in itself.

I had a much better view with the halo than I expected.

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.

Senator Kerry has been in Washington long enough to take both sides on just about every issue.

Many a trip continues long after movement in time and space have ceased.

Experience hath shewn, that even under the best forms of government those entrusted with power have, in time, and by slow operations, perverted it into tyranny.

Well, I was 29 years old when I came to the United States Senate, and I have learned a lot.