Experience Quotes

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.

“But inner experience is only one source of human knowledge.”

Muhammad Iqbal

More Experience Quotes

“The soul is everlasting, and its learning experience is lifetime after lifetime.”

Shirley MacLaine

“Of two pleasures, if there be one which all or almost all who have experience of both give a decided preference, irrespective of any feeling of moral obligation to prefer it, that is the more desirable pleasure.”

John Stuart Mill

“I want people to think of me as a nice person. I really am so blessed. All of this has been a great experience and I thank the American public so much for putting me in this position. I appreciate every second of it.”

Carrie Underwood

“Any film, or to me any creative endeavour, no matter who you're working with, is, in many cases, a wonderful experience.”

Martin Scorsese

“Some writers can only deal with childhood experience, because it's complete. For another kind of writer, life goes on, and he's able to keep processing that as well.”

V. S. Naipaul

“A failure is a man who has blundered, but is not able to cash in the experience.”

Elbert Hubbard

“Stories have always been the things that entertain me and make me feel happy and sad and move me and give me the experience of being able to live many lives in one lifetime. It's the best thing about being alive.”

Michael Sheen

“Experience is what enables you to recognize a mistake when you make it again.”

Earl Wilson

“The great awareness comes slowly, piece by piece. The path of spiritual growth is a path of lifelong learning. The experience of spiritual power is basically a joyful one.”

M. Scott Peck

“Reading the play at home, however fulfilling, can never be the vivacious experience that Shakespeare intended.”

Arthur Smith

“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.”

Marilyn Monroe

“I wouldn't go up on a stage now if you paid a thousand dollars for one minute of acting. It's a nasty experience. You're up there all by yourself. You're so damn exposed.”

Elia Kazan

“Certainly I've had the experience of thinking a person was one thing, and finding out they were another.”

John Hawkes

“Experience keeps a dear school, but fools will learn in no other.”

Benjamin Franklin

“To have God speak to the heart is a majestic experience, an experience that people may miss if they monopolize the conversation and never pause to hear God's responses.”

Charles Stanley

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