Quotes on Experience

Character is determined more by the lack of certain experiences than by those one has had.

Despotism has so often been established in the name of liberty that experience should warn us to judge parties by their practices rather than their preachings.

There have been times when I felt suicidal and I would stop my head from going in that direction of negativity because I thought there'd be something I'd miss that was funny in the future. If there's a chance I'm going to laugh tomorrow then want to live to experience that.

Attaining lasting happiness requires that we enjoy the journey on our way toward a destination we deem valuable. Happiness is not about making it to the peak of the mountain nor is it about climbing aimlessly around the mountain; happiness is the experience of climbing toward the peak.

Every one of us is a mystic. We may or may not realize it, we may not even like it. But whether we know it or not, whether we accept it or not, mystical experience is always there, inviting us on a journey of ultimate discovery. We have been given the gift of life in this perplexing world to become who we ultimately are: creatures of boundless love, caring compassion, and wisdom. Existence is a summons to the eternal journey of the sage - the sage we all are, if only we could see.

Art is a human activity consisting in this, that one man consciously, by means of certain external signs, hands on to others feelings he has lived through, and that other people are infected by these feelings, and also experience them.

Experience keeps a dear school, but fools will learn in no other, and scarce in that; for it is true we may give advice, but we cannot give conduct.

You shall judge a man by his foes as well as by his friends.

By three methods we may learn wisdom: First, by reflection, which is noblest; Second, by imitation, which is easiest; and third by experience, which is the bitterest.

I was always afraid of things that worked the first time. Long experience proved that there were great drawbacks found generally before they could be got commercial; but here was something there was no doubt of.

Humans hardly ever learn from the experience of others. They learn - when they do, which isn't often - on their own, the hard way.

I know not anything more pleasant, or more instructive, than to compare experience with expectation, or to register from time to time the difference between idea and reality. It is by this kind of observation that we grow daily less liable to be disappointed.

Creativity comes from looking for the unexpected and stepping outside your own experience.

Losing strengthens you. It reveals your weaknesses so you can fix them

It is impossible to experience one's death objectively and still carry a tune.

The basic experience of everyone is the experience of human limitation.

Chaos was the law of nature; Order was the dream of man.

The theoretical idea ... does not arise apart from and independent of experience; nor can it be derived from experience by a purely logical procedure. It is produced by a creative act. Once a theoretical idea has been acquired, one does well to hold fast to it until it leads to an untenable conclusion.

Groups do not have experiences except insofar as all their members do. And there are no experiences... that all the members of a scientific community must share in the course of a [scientific] revolution. Revolutions should be described not in terms of group experience but in terms of the varied experiences of individual group members. Indeed, that variety itself turns out to play an essential role in the evolution of scientific knowledge.

It is important to do what you don't know how to do. It is important to see your skills as keeping you from learning what is deepest and most mysterious. If you know how to focus, unfocus. If your tendency is to make sense out of chaos, start chaos.

How novel and original must be each new mans view of the universe - for though the world is so old - and so many books have been written - each object appears wholly undescribed to our experience - each field of thought wholly unexplored - the whole world is an America - a New World.