“I need more raw experience. I've read and watched a lot of things, but I haven't done a lot of things.”
Experience is what you get when you did not get what you wanted — and these quotes prove that the lessons of lived experience are impossible to shortcut. They cover wisdom earned the hard way, the value of mistakes, and why secondhand knowledge only gets you so far.
“Studies perfect nature and are perfected still by experience.”
“I need more raw experience. I've read and watched a lot of things, but I haven't done a lot of things.”
“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.”
“Experience teaches us to be most on our guard to protect liberty when the government's purposes are beneficent.”
“I had no expectations about fatherhood, really, but it's definitely a journey I'm glad to be taking. Number one, it's a great learning experience. When my mother told me it's a 24/7 job, she wasn't kidding.”
“I am very happy since when I am in different cities I can experience and learn different cultures!”
“But although all our knowledge begins with experience, it does not follow that it arises from experience.”
“We learn from experience that men never learn anything from experience.”
“For me, titles are either a natural two-second experience or stressful enough to give you an ulcer. If they don't pop out perfect on the first try, they can be really hard to repair. Or, worse, if the author thinks they pop out perfect, but the publishing house does not agree, it's difficult to shift gears. And then? Then you go insane.”
“There is no wider gulf in the universe than yawns between those on the hither and thither side of vital experience.”
“The wisdom of the wise and the experience of the ages is preserved into perpetuity by a nation's proverbs, fables, folk sayings and quotations.”
“I think being a parent is the most challenging thing you do. That's why we're here. It's at the heart of what it is to be a human being. It's the ultimate experience because it questions everything about who you are. But it's difficult.”
“If you want plenty of experience in dealing with difficult people, then have kids.”
“Obviously an actor draws on his own experience.”
“In fact the experience at Oxford has really helped me later in life.”
“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.'”