Quotes about experience (5425 quotes) | Quotes of famous people

“Only once in your life, I truly believe, you find someone who can completely turn your world around. You tell them things that you’ve never shared with another soul and they absorb everything you say and actually want to hear more. You share hopes for the future, dreams that will never come true, goals that were never achieved and the many disappointments life has thrown at you. When something wonderful happens, you can’t wait to tell them about it, knowing they will share in your excitement. They are not embarrassed to cry with you when you are hurting or laugh with you when you make a fool of yourself. Never do they hurt your feelings or make you feel like you are not good enough, but rather they build you up and show you the things about yourself that make you special and even beautiful. There is never any pressure, jealousy or competition but only a quiet calmness when they are around. You can be yourself and not worry about what they will think of you because they love you for who you are. The things that seem insignificant to most people such as a note, song or walk become invaluable treasures kept safe in your heart to cherish forever. Memories of your childhood come back and are so clear and vivid it’s like being young again. Colours seem brighter and more brilliant. Laughter seems part of daily life where before it was infrequent or didn’t exist at all. A phone call or two during the day helps to get you through a long day’s work and always brings a smile to your face. In their presence, there’s no need for continuous conversation, but you find you’re quite content in just having them nearby. Things that never interested you before become fascinating because you know they are important to this person who is so special to you. You think of this person on every occasion and in everything you do. Simple things bring them to mind like a pale blue sky, gentle wind or even a storm cloud on the horizon. You open your heart knowing that there’s a chance it may be broken one day and in opening your heart, you experience a love and joy that you never dreamed possible. You find that being vulnerable is the only way to allow your heart to feel true pleasure that’s so real it scares you. You find strength in knowing you have a true friend and possibly a soul mate who will remain loyal to the end. Life seems completely different, exciting and worthwhile. Your only hope and security is in knowing that they are a part of your life.”

Bob Marley (1945–1981) Jamaican singer, songwriter, musician

love , Love , Life , People

“We do not learn from experience… we learn from reflecting on experience.”

John Dewey (1859–1952) American philosopher, psychologist, and educational reformer

Learning

“Money does not represent such a value as men have placed upon it. All my money has been invested into experiments with which I have made new discoveries enabling mankind to have a little easier life.”

Nikola Tesla (1856–1943) Serbian American inventor

As quoted in "A Visit to Nikola Tesla" by Dragislav L. Petković in Politika (April 1927); also in Tesla, Master of Lightning (1999) by Margaret Cheney, Robert Uth, and Jim Glenn, p. 82

Life , Men , Money

“I didn’t grow up in a man’s man world. I grew up with my mum and my sister. But I definitely think in the last two years, I’ve become a lot more content with who I am. I think there’s so much masculinity in being vulnerable and allowing yourself to be feminine, and I’m very comfortable with that. Growing up you don’t even know what those things mean. You have this idea of what being masculine is and as you grow up and experience more of the world, you become more comfortable with who you are. Today it’s easier to embrace masculinity in so many different things. I definitely find – through music, writing, talking with friends and being open – that some of the times when I feel most confident is when I’m allowing myself to be vulnerable. It’s something that I definitely try and do.”

Harry Styles (1994) English singer, songwriter, and actor

In conversation with Timothée Chalamet for i-D Magazine (2 November 2018) https://i-d.vice.com/en_uk/article/evwwma/harry-styles-interviews-timothee-chalamet-photos

Confidence , Time , Music , Self-confidence

“This is what the past is for! Every experience God gives us, every person He puts in our lives is the perfect preparation for the future that only He can see.”

Corrie ten Boom book The Hiding Place

Source: The Hiding Place

Faith , God , Past , Future

“Consider again that dot. That's here. That's home. That's us. On it everyone you love, everyone you know, everyone you ever heard of, every human being who ever was, lived out their lives. The aggregate of our joy and suffering, thousands of confident religions, ideologies, and economic doctrines, every hunter and forager, every hero and coward, every creator and destroyer of civilization, every king and peasant, every young couple in love, every mother and father, hopeful child, inventor and explorer, every teacher of morals, every corrupt politician, every "superstar", every "supreme leader", every saint and sinner in the history of our species lived there — on a mote of dust suspended in a sunbeam.
The Earth is a very small stage in a vast cosmic arena. Think of the rivers of blood spilled by all those generals and emperors so that, in glory and triumph, they could become the momentary masters of a fraction of a dot. Think of the endless cruelties visited by the inhabitants of one corner of this pixel on the scarcely distinguishable inhabitants of some other corner, how frequent their misunderstandings, how eager they are to kill one another, how fervent their hatreds.
Our posturings, our imagined self-importance, the delusion that we have some privileged position in the Universe, are challenged by this point of pale light. Our planet is a lonely speck in the great enveloping cosmic dark. In our obscurity, in all this vastness, there is no hint that help will come from elsewhere to save us from ourselves.
The Earth is the only world known so far to harbor life. There is nowhere else, at least in the near future, to which our species could migrate. Visit, yes. Settle, not yet. Like it or not, for the moment the Earth is where we make our stand.
It has been said that astronomy is a humbling and character-building experience. There is perhaps no better demonstration of the folly of human conceits than this distant image of our tiny world. To me, it underscores our responsibility to deal more kindly with one another, and to preserve and cherish the pale blue dot, the only home we've ever known.”

Carl Sagan book Pale Blue Dot

Source: Pale Blue Dot: A Vision of the Human Future in Space (1994), p. 8, Supplemental image at randi.org http://www.randi.org/images/122801-BlueDot.jpg

Love , Life , World , Religion

“I have a really interesting political point of view, and it’s not always something I say too loud at dinner tables here, but you can’t go from a $2,000-a-night suite at La Mirage to a penitentiary and really understand it and come out a liberal. You can’t. I wouldn’t wish that experience on anyone else, but it was very, very, very educational for me and has informed my proclivities and politics ever since.”

Robert Downey Jr. (1965) American actor

Quoted in David Carr, "Been Up, Been Down. Now? Super." http://www.nytimes.com/2008/04/20/movies/20carr.html?_r=4&pagewanted=2&8dpc&oref=slogin&, New York Times (2008-04-20)

Education , Understanding , Night

“It is important to expect nothing, to take every experience, including the negative ones, as merely steps on the path, and to proceed.”

Ram Dass (1931–2019) American contemporary spiritual teacher and the author of the 1971 book Be Here Now

“Today's scientists have substituted mathematics for experiments, and they wander off through equation after equation, and eventually build a structure which has no relation to reality.”

Nikola Tesla (1856–1943) Serbian American inventor

"Radio Power Will Revolutionize the World" in Modern Mechanics and Inventions (July 1934)

Mathematics , Reality

“Ere long intelligence—transmitted without wires—will throb through the earth like a pulse through a living organism. The wonder is that, with the present state of knowledge and the experiences gained, no attempt is being made to disturb the electrostatic or magnetic condition of the earth, and transmit, if nothing else, intelligence.”

Nikola Tesla (1856–1943) Serbian American inventor

Electrical Engineer, (24 Jun 1892), 11‎, 609.

Intelligence , Knowledge

“The sole substitute for an experience we have not ourselves lived through is art and literature.”

Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn (1918–2008) Russian writer

Art , Literature

“Every one interprets everything in terms of his own experience. If you say anything which does not touch a precisely similar spot in another man's brain, he either misunderstands you, or doesn't understand you at all.”

Aleister Crowley book Diary of a Drug Fiend

Source: Diary of a Drug Fiend

Understanding

“The difficulties which would have to be overcome to make several of the preceding experiments conclusive are so great as to be almost insurmountable.”

J. J. Thomson (1856–1940) British physicist

Warning about the non-conclusiveness for the experimental foundation of electrostatic theory, in a footnote of the third edition of: [James Clerk Maxwell, A Treatise on Electricity and Magnetism, Vol.1, 3rd Edition, Oxford University Press, 1891, 37]
Quotes eat me

“Edison was by far the most successful and, probably, the last exponent of the purely empirical method of investigation. Everything he achieved was the result of persistent trials and experiments often performed at random but always attesting extraordinary vigor and resource. Starting from a few known elements, he would make their combinations and permutations, tabulate them and run through the whole list, completing test after test with incredible rapidity until he obtained a clue. His mind was dominated by one idea, to leave no stone unturned, to exhaust every possibility.”

Nikola Tesla (1856–1943) Serbian American inventor

Idea , Success

“All the loving acts that two human beings are capable of, the simple act of holding hands can often become the most intimate. Why is this so? Basically, because the nature of the hands and feet is such that the energy system finds expression in these two parts of the body in a very singular way. Two palms coming together have far more intimacy than the contact between any other parts of the body. You can try this with yourself. You don’t even need a partner. When you put your hands together, the two energy dimensions within you (right-left, masculine-feminine, solar-lunar, yin-yang, etc.) are linked in a certain way, and you begin to experience a sense of unity within yourself. This is the logic of the traditional Indian namaskar. It is a means of harmonizing the system. So, the simplest way to experience a state of union is to try this simple namaskar yoga. Put your hands together, and pay loving attention to any object you use or consume, or any form of life that you encounter. When you bring this sense of awareness into every simple act, your experience of life will never be the same again. There is even a possibility that if you put your hands together, you could unite the world!”

Sadhguru book Inner Engineering: A Yogi's Guide to Joy

Source: Inner Engineering: A Yogi's Guide to Joy

Love , Life , World , Way

“At 100, I have a mind that is superior — thanks to experience — than when I was 20.”

Rita Levi-Montalcini (1909–2012) Italian neurologist

Source: Quoted in Associated Press obituary http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/50324234/ns/technology_and_science-science/#.UO09q6w1fTp

“Wisdom is a perfection of knowledge acquired through experience.”

Mwanandeke Kindembo (1996) Congolese author

Knowledge , Perfection , Wisdom

“So many people are most miserable these days.
The reason they find it so difficult to be happy is that they always view the past to be better than it was, the present dramatically worse than it is, and the future less resolute than it will be.
The idea of happiness is foreign to them.
Is this not something that is innate because babies are born with
"tabula rasa" which refers to the epistemological idea that individuals are born without built-in mental content and that therefore all knowledge comes from experience or perception. However I don't disagree with the doctrine of Innatism which holds that the mind is born already in possession of certain knowledge.
A smile, for instance is natural and innate!
So it is a combination of the two schools of thought.”

Stephie Pahlavi Zan

Baby , Idea , Nature , Knowledge

“You feel your strength in the experience of pain.”

Jim Morrison (1943–1971) lead singer of The Doors

Pain , Feeling

“The purpose of life…is to live it, to taste experience to the utmost, to reach out eagerly and without fear for newer and richer experience.”

Eleanor Roosevelt (1884–1962) American politician, diplomat, and activist, and First Lady of the United States

Foreword (January 1960)
You Learn by Living (1960)

Deep , Attitude , Life , Fear

“The soul should always stand ajar, ready to welcome the ecstatic experience.”

Emily Dickinson (1830–1886) American poet

Soul

“All life is an experiment. The more experiments you make the better.”

Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882) American philosopher, essayist, and poet

Source: Journals of Ralph Waldo Emerson, with Annotations - 1841-1844

Deep , Motivational , Depressing , Happy

“Death is not an event in life: we do not live to experience death. If we take eternity to mean not infinite temporal duration but timelessness, then eternal life belongs to those who live in the present. Our life has no end in just the way in which our visual field has no limits.”

Ludwig Wittgenstein (1889–1951) Austrian-British philosopher

6.4311
Der Tod ist kein Ereignis des Lebens. Den Tod erlebt man nicht. Wenn man unter Ewigkeit nicht unendliche Zeitdauer, sondern Unzeitlichkeit versteht, dann lebt der ewig, der in der Gegenwart lebt. Unser Leben ist ebenso endlos, wie unser Gesichtsfeld grenzenlos ist.
1920s, Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus (1922)
Variant: Death is not an event of life. Death is not lived through.
If by eternity is understood not endless temporal duration but timelessness, then he lives eternally who lives in the present.
Our life is endless in the way that our visual field is without limit.

Life , Death , Way

“Never argue with stupid people, they will drag you down to their level and then beat you with experience.”

Mark Twain (1835–1910) American author and humorist

Variant: Never argue with an idiot. They will drag you down to their level and beat you with experience.

People , Stupidity

“The ideal subject of totalitarian rule is not the convinced Nazi or the convinced Communist, but people for whom the distinction between fact and fiction (i. e., the reality of experience) and the distinction between true and false (i. e., the standards of thought) no longer exist.”

Hannah Arendt book The Origins of Totalitarianism

Part 3, Ch. 13, § 3.
Source: On the subject the ideal subjects for a totalitarian authority. Source: The Origins of Totalitarianism, published in 1951. As quoted by Scroll Staff (December 04, 2017): Ideas in literature: Ten things Hannah Arendt said that are eerily relevant in today’s political times https://web.archive.org/web/20191001213756/https://scroll.in/article/856549/ten-things-hannah-arendt-said-that-are-eerily-relevant-in-todays-political-times. In: Scroll.in. Archived from the original https://scroll.in/article/856549/ten-things-hannah-arendt-said-that-are-eerily-relevant-in-todays-political-times on October 1, 2019.

People , Reality , Falseness

“The boys in my grade talked about sex a lot. Some of them even told me that they had sex with their girlfriends. This was the most devastating and traumatizing thing I’ve ever heard in my life. Boys having sex at my age of Fourteen? I couldn’t fathom it. How is it that they were able to have such intimate and pleasurable experiences with girls while I could only fantasize about it? I frequently started asking myself. This was an all-boys school… How in the hell were those boys even able to meet girls to have sex with? I wondered. I hoped they were lying. I hoped against all hope. […] and one of my obnoxious classmates named Jesse was bragging about having sex with his girlfriend. I defiantly told him that I didn’t believe him, so he played a voice recording of what sounded like him and his girlfriend having sex. I could hear a girl saying his name over and over again while she panted franticly. He grinned at me smugly. I felt so inferior to him, and I hated him.”

Elliot Rodger (1991–2014) American spree killer

My Twisted World (2014), Thoughts at 14

Life , Hate , Pleasure , Age

“Music is your own experience, your own thoughts, your wisdom. If you don't live it, it won't come out of your horn. They teach you there's a boundary line to music. But, man, there's no boundary line to art.”

Charlie Parker (1920–1955) American jazz saxophonist and composer

As quoted in Bird : The Legend Of Charlie Parker (1977) by Robert George Reisner, p. 27

Wisdom , Art , Music

“When we enter a new situation in life and are confronted by a new person, we bring with us the prejudices of the past and our previous experiences of people. These prejudices we project upon the new person. Indeed, getting to know a person is largely a matter of withdrawing projections; of dispelling the smoke screen of what we imagine he is like and replacing it with the reality of what he is actually like.”

Karl Popper (1902–1994) Austrian-British philosopher of science

Anthony Storr as quoted in The Observer (12 July 1970)
Misattributed

Life , People , Imagination , Reality

“Why do they always show Christ up there bleeding and dying on the cross? We don't remember John Lennon lying there with a bullet hole in his head. I'm against the arbitrary organization of 'God' as a concept. We should all experience it all individually and purely. I don't agree with the separation of God and the body, I don't believe that we aren't a part of 'it', I don't agree that it's a man. In most religions there's no place for women. There aren't any women in the Holy Trinity and I need that. I love women, I came from a woman.”

Jeff Buckley (1966–1997) American singer, guitarist and songwriter

B-Side Magazine, October/November 1994
From Interviews

Love , Women , God , Religion

“You gain strength, courage and confidence by every experience in which you really stop to look fear in the face.”

Eleanor Roosevelt (1884–1962) American politician, diplomat, and activist, and First Lady of the United States

Source: You Learn by Living (1960), p. 29–30
Context: You gain strength, courage and confidence by every experience in which you really stop to look fear in the face. You are able to say to yourself, "I have lived through this horror. I can take the next thing that comes along." … You must do the thing you think you cannot do.

Inspirational , Courageous , Wise , For women

“I conceived the idea from my personal everyday experience, so what's better than to capture myself in the perfect mood.”

NasserTone (1994) Nasser Ali Albahrani is a director, cinematographer, photographer, producer, & YouTuber, who was born on April 3…

Panorama Magazine Article (September 19, 2010)

Perfection , Idea , Mood , Personality

“We learn of great things by little experiences.”

Bram Stoker book The Jewel of Seven Stars

Source: The Jewel of Seven Stars

Learning

“Everything that is past is either a learning experience to grow on, a beautiful memory to reflect on, or a motivating factor to act upon.”

Denis Waitley (1933) American writer

Beauty , Motivation , Learning , Memory

“Poets are shameless with their experiences: they exploit them.”

Friedrich Nietzsche (1844–1900) German philosopher, poet, composer, cultural critic, and classical philologist

“We are not human beings having a spiritual experience; we are spiritual beings having a human experience.”

Pierre Teilhard De Chardin (1881–1955) French philosopher and Jesuit priest

This is attributed to Pierre Teilhard de Chardin in The Joy of Kindness (1993), by Robert J. Furey, p. 138; but it is attributed to G. I. Gurdjieff in Beyond Prophecies and Predictions: Everyone's Guide To The Coming Changes (1993) by Moira Timms, p. 62; neither cite a source. It was widely popularized by Wayne Dyer, who often quotes it in his presentations, crediting it to Chardin, as does Stephen Covey in Living the 7 Habits : Stories of Courage and Inspiration (2000), p. 47. Such statements could be considered paraphrases of Hegel's dictum that matter is spirit fallen into a state of self-otherness. Or any number of thousands of similarly vague quotes by hundreds of predecessors.
Disputed
Variant: We are not human beings on a spiritual journey. We are spiritual beings on a human journey.
Variant: We are not human beings having a spiritual experience; we are spiritual beings having a human experience.

“What experience and history teach is this — that nations and governments have never learned anything from history, or acted upon any lessons they might have drawn from it.”

Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel book Lectures on the Philosophy of History

Introduction, as translated by H. B. Nisbet (1975)
Variant translation: What experience and history teach is this — that people and governments never have learned anything from history, or acted on principles deduced from it.
Pragmatical (didactic) reflections, though in their nature decidedly abstract, are truly and indefeasibly of the Present, and quicken the annals of the dead Past with the life of to-day. Whether, indeed, such reflections are truly interesting and enlivening, depends on the writer's own spirit. Moral reflections must here be specially noticed, the moral teaching expected from history; which latter has not unfrequently been treated with a direct view to the former. It may be allowed that examples of virtue elevate the soul, and are applicable in the moral instruction of children for impressing excellence upon their minds. But the destinies of peoples and states, their interests, relations, and the complicated tissue of their affairs, present quite another field. Rulers, Statesmen, Nations, are wont to be emphatically commended to the teaching which experience offers in history. But what experience and history teach is this, that peoples and governments never have learned anything from history, or acted on principles deduced from it. Each period is involved in such peculiar circumstances, exhibits a condition of things so strictly idiosyncratic, that its conduct must be regulated by considerations connected with itself, and itself alone. Amid the pressure of great events, a general principle gives no help. It is useless to revert to similar circumstances in the Past. The pallid shades of memory struggle in vain with the life and freedom of the Present.
Lectures on the History of History Vol 1 p. 6 John Sibree translation (1857), 1914
Lectures on the Philosophy of History (1832), Volume 1

History , Learning

“I like spring, but it is too young. I like summer, but it is too proud. So I like best of all autumn, because its leaves are a little yellow, its tone mellower, its colours richer, and it is tinged a little with sorrow and a premonition of death. Its golden richness speaks not of the innocence of spring, nor of the power of summer, but of the mellowness and kindly wisdom of approaching age. It knows the limitations of life and is content. From a knowledge of those limitations and its richness of experience emerges a symphony of colours, richer than all, its green speaking of life and strength, its orange speaking of golden content and its purple of resignation and death.”

Lin Yutang (1895–1976) Chinese writer

Epilogue, p. 328
My Country and My People (1935)

Life , Death , Wisdom , Age

“Marriage is the triumph of imagination over intelligence. Second marriage is the triumph of hope over experience.”

Oscar Wilde (1854–1900) Irish writer and poet

Wedding , Marriage , Hope , Imagination

“The whole experience of being hit by a bullet is very interesting and I think worth describing in detail.”

George Orwell book Homage to Catalonia

Source: Homage to Catalonia

Thinking

“In terms of experience, we want to make this (referring to the self) very pleasant. We want this to be blissful, ecstatic. But, as I said before, even being ecstatic is not goal by itself. If you are blissful by your own nature, then the important thing is that you are no more the issue. There are other issues in this existence; we can look at those. But if you are an issue, what other issue will you take in your hands? You will not touch anything. When I am enough trouble myself, why do I want to take on this one or that one? When I am no more an issue, now I am willing to dig into the whole existence and see what it is all about.”

Sadhguru (1957) Yogi, mystic, visionary and humanitarian

Source: Of Mystics & Mistakes

Nature

“The mystery of life isn't a problem to solve, but a reality to experience.”

Frank Herbert book Dune

Source: Dune

Life , Problem , Reality

“Experience is what you get while looking for something else.”

Federico Fellini (1920–1993) Italian filmmaker

"Experience"
I'm a Born Liar (2003)

“The joy of life consists in the exercise of one's energies, continual growth, constant change, the enjoyment of every new experience. To stop means simply to die. The eternal mistake of mankind is to set up an attainable ideal.”

Aleister Crowley (1875–1947) poet, mountaineer, occultist

Source: The Confessions of Aleister Crowley: An Autohagiography

Life , Exercises , Change , Joy

“We know not through our intellect but through our experience.”

Maurice Merleau-Ponty (1908–1961) French phenomenological philosopher

“I am often asked why men don’t get as worked up as they might about women—particularly poor women—having to use their bodies as prostitutes. Because most men unconsciously experience themselves as prostitutes every day—the miner, the firefighter, the construction worker, the logger, the soldier, the meatpacker—these men are prostitutes in the direct sense: they sacrifice their bodies for money and for their families.”

Warren Farrell book The Myth of Male Power

Source: The Myth of Male Power (1993), Part II: The Glass Cellars of the disposable sex, p. 233.

Women , Men , Money , Family

“The only way art lives is through the experience of the observer. The reality of art begins with the eyes of the beholder, through imagination, invention and confrontation.”

Keith Haring (1958–1990) American artist and social activist whose work responded to the New York City street culture of the 1980s b…

Haring – Art in Transit http://www.haring.com/!/selected_writing/haring-art-in-transit#.V1cw0tIrKyw The Keith Haring Foundation

Art , Way , Imagination , Reality

“We don't make mistakes; we just have happy accidents. And that's when you really experience the joy of painting.”

Bob Ross (1942–1995) American painter, art instructor, and television host

Bob Ross: Beauty Is Everywhere. Collection 1: Ep. 8 "Wintertime Blues"; The Joy of Painting Season 20: Episode 3 Bob Ross: Winter in Pastel.

Joy , Painting , Happiness

“A piece of art is not a loaf of bread. When someone steals a loaf of bread from the store, that's it. The loaf of bread is gone. When someone downloads a piece of music, it's just data until the listener puts that music back together with their own ears, their mind, their subjective experience. How they perceive your work changes your work.”

Jeff Tweedy (1967) musician

Interviewed in 2004 http://www.wired.com/news/culture/0,1284,65688,00.html

Art , Music , Change

“Take a close look at the part that "love" plays in your life. Make an inventory of love: people, things, ideas, experiences. Try to live your gratitude.”

Patch Adams (1945) Physician, activist, diplomat, author

Source: House Calls: How we can all heal the world one visit at a time (1998), p. 10

Love , Life , People , Idea

“Experience first, then intellectualize.”

Carl Orff (1895–1982) German composer

As quoted in "The Orff Process" (4 July 1997) by Deborah Jeter

“Essentially, we distinguish ourselves from the rest. If you want to win something, run the 100 meters. If you want to experience something, run a marathon.”

Emil Zátopek (1922–2000) Czech Olympic long-distance runner

Attributed in "Making a run at the Olympic dream", an unsigned article from The StarPhoenix, 9 May 2007, at canada.com (CanWest MediaWorks Publications Inc.) http://www.canada.com/saskatoonstarphoenix/news/sports/story.html?id=b111ee9e-182a-4cff-831a-f784cc7bb37e

“In a culture, you can choose fear or love. It’s been my experience and my observation that humans on this planet feel more comfortable with fear rather than love and openness… I do know what history tells us about humans. And humans, they actually don’t feel very comfortable with openness and freedom.”

RuPaul (1960) Actriz de Televisa, dueña y señora de los ejidos cacaoahuateros

Quoted by Doug Rule in RuPaul: Ultimate Queen http://www.metroweekly.com/2016/04/ultimate-queen-rupaul/ (2016)

Love , Fear , Feeling , History

“He had zero experience but he was really good. The irony is, given the fact that the character can't play very well, is that he's actually a brilliant footballer.”

Helena Bonham Carter (1966) British actress

Of co-star Greg Sulkin in film "66"; Evening Times (Glasgow); Nov 2, 2006; Andy Dougan; p. 3

Football

“Our clothing and our armour ought to be of such a kind that men of mature experience will not say that we have spent too much on them, nor younger men say we have spent too little.”

Louis IX of France (1214–1270) King of France

On se doit assemer en robes et en armes en tel manière que li preudome de cest siècle ne dient que on en face trop, ne les joenes gens de cest siècle ne dient que on en face peu.
Page 171. http://users.skynet.be/antoine.mechelynck/chroniq/joinv/JV006.htm
Jean de Joinville Livre des saintes paroles et des bons faiz nostre roy saint Looys

Men , Clothes

“A painting is not a picture of an experience; it is an experience.”

Mark Rothko (1903–1970) American painter

As quoted in 'Mark Rothko', Dorothy Seiberling in LIFE magazine (16 November 1959), p. 82
1950's

Painting

“Experience without theory is blind, but theory without experience is mere intellectual play.”

Immanuel Kant (1724–1804) German philosopher

This is declared to be "an old Kantian maxim" in General Systems Vol. 7-8 (1962)‎, p. 11, by the Society for the Advancement of General Systems Theory, but may simply be a paraphrase or summation of Kantian ideas.
Kant's treatment of the transcendental logic in the First Critique contains a portion, of which this quote may be an ambiguously worded paraphrase. Kant, claiming that both reason and the senses are essential to the formation of our understanding of the world, writes: "Without sensibility no object would be given to us, and without understanding none would be thought. Thoughts without content are empty, intuitions without concepts are blind (A51/B75)".
Disputed

“Once we discover how to appreciate the timeless values in our daily experiences, we can enjoy the best things in life.”

Jerome K. Jerome (1859–1927) English humorist

Harry Pepner, as quoted in Chicken Soup for the Soul : Stories for a Better World (2005) by Jack Canfield, p. 2
Misattributed

Life

“The careful experiments of Joule, who developed heat in various ways by the application of mechanical force, establish almost to a certainty, not only the possibility of increasing the quantity of heat, but also the fact that the newly-produced heat is proportional to the work expended in its production.”

Rudolf Clausius (1822–1888) German mathematical physicist

First Memoir.
The Mechanical Theory of Heat (1867)

Way

“Direct experience is the evasion, or hiding place of those devoid of imagination.”

Fernando Pessoa book The Book of Disquiet

Ibid., p. 163
The Book of Disquiet
Original: A experiência directa é o subterfúgio, ou o esconderijo, daqueles que são desprovidos de imaginação.

Imagination

“In Tunisia the Americans had to pay a stiff price for their experience, but it brought rich dividends. Even at that time, the American generals showed themselves to be very advanced in the tactical handling of their forces, although we had to wait until the Patton Army in France to see the most astonishing achievements in mobile warfare.”

Erwin Rommel (1891–1944) German field marshal of World War II

Source: The Rommel Papers (1953), Ch. XXIII : The Sky Has Grown Dark, p. 523.

Time , Waiting

“I am not my thoughts, emotions, sense perceptions, and experiences. I am not the content of my life. I am Life. I am the space in which all things happen. I am consciousness.”

Eckhart Tolle (1948) German writer

Stillness Speaks (2003)

Life , Sense

“I excused myself as soon as I finished eating, and boy did I stuff myself on that meal. I then walked outside onto the beach. The wine had long since gone to my head, making me feel a sense of dizzy invigoration. I started walking along the shore, taking in the magnificence of the gentle, moonlit ocean. It was so… romantic. I kept walking and walking with no destination in mind. The romance of it all filled me with despair and longing. I wanted a girlfriend to experience that moment with me, but no girl wanted to be my girlfriend. The only thing I could do was imagine how heavenly it would be to have a beautiful girl by my side. It is such a shameful tragedy.”

Elliot Rodger (1991–2014) American spree killer

I ended up walking for two hours, and at the end of it I was crying to myself because I felt so sad.
My Twisted World (2014), Thoughts at 19, Longing

Beauty , Feeling , Imagination , Girl

“I can respect the artistic aim of a composer if he arrives at the so-called modern idiom after an intense period of preparation…Such composers know what they are doing when they break a law; they know what to react against, because they have had experience in the classical forms and style. Having mastered the rules, they know which can be violated and which should be obeyed. But, I am sorry to say, I have found too often that young composers plunge into the writing of experimental music with their school lessons only half learned. Too much radical music is sheer sham, for this very reason: its composer sets about revolutionizing the laws of music before he learned them himself.”

Sergei Rachmaninoff (1873–1943) Russian composer, pianist, and conductor

Interviewed by David Ewen in The Etude, 1941; cited from Josiah Fisk and Jeff Nichols (eds.) Composers on Music (Boston, MA: Northeastern Universities Press, 1997) pp. 235-6

School , Law , Music , Learning

“It can scarcely be denied that the supreme goal of all theory is to make the irreducible basic elements as simple and as few as possible without having to surrender the adequate representation of a single datum of experience.”

Albert Einstein (1879–1955) German-born physicist and founder of the theory of relativity

"On the Method of Theoretical Physics" The Herbert Spencer Lecture, delivered at Oxford (10 June 1933); also published in Philosophy of Science, Vol. 1, No. 2 (April 1934), pp. 163-169., p. 165. [thanks to Dr. Techie @ www.wordorigins.org and JSTOR]
There is a quote attributed to Einstein that may have arisen as a paraphrase of the above quote, commonly given as “Everything should be made as simple as possible, but no simpler,” "Everything should be made as simple as possible, but not simpler", or “Make things as simple as possible, but not simpler.” See this article from the Quote Investigator http://quoteinvestigator.com/2011/05/13/einstein-simple/ for a discussion of where these later variants may have arisen.
The original quote is very similar to Occam's razor, which advocates that among all hypotheses compatible with all available observations, the simplest hypothesis is the most plausible one.
The aphorism "everything should be made as simple as possible, but no simpler" is normally taken to be a warning against too much simplicity and emphasizes that one cannot simplify things to a point where the hypothesis is no more compatible with all observations. The aphorism does not contradict or extend Occam's razor, but rather stresses that both elements of the razor, simplicity and compatibility with the observations, are essential.
The earliest known appearance of Einstein's razor is an essay by Roger Sessions in the New York Times (8 January 1950) http://select.nytimes.com/gst/abstract.html?res=F30615FE3559137A93CAA9178AD85F448585F9, where Sessions appears to be paraphrasing Einstein: “I also remember a remark of Albert Einstein, which certainly applies to music. He said, in effect, that everything should be as simple as it can be, but not simpler.”
Another early appearance, from Time magazine (14 December 1962) http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,872923,00.html: “We try to keep in mind a saying attributed to Einstein—that everything must be made as simple as possible, but not one bit simpler.”
1930s

“A childish feeling, I admit, but, when we retire from the conventions of society and draw close to nature, we involuntarily become children: each attribute acquired by experience falls away from the soul, which becomes anew such as it was once and will surely be again.”

Mikhail Lermontov book A Hero of Our Time

A Hero of Our Time (1840; rev. 1841)

Children , Feeling , Soul , Nature

“How is it possible that a being with such sensitive jewels as the eyes, such enchanted musical instruments as the ears, and such fabulous arabesque of nerves as the brain can experience itself anything less than a god.”

Alan Watts (1915–1973) British philosopher, writer and speaker

Page 138
The Book on the Taboo Against Knowing Who You Are (1966)

God , Music

“Mystical experiences, like those that marked my childhood, are apparently far from rare.”

Albert Hofmann (1906–2008) Swiss chemist

Foreword
LSD : My Problem Child (1980)
Context: In studying the literature connected with my work, I became aware of the great universal significance of visionary experience. It plays a dominant role, not only in mysticism and the history of religion, but also in the creative process in art, literature, and science. More recent investigations have shown that many persons also have visionary experiences in daily life, though most of us fail to recognize their meaning and value. Mystical experiences, like those that marked my childhood, are apparently far from rare.

Childhood

“Physics is to be regarded not so much as the study of something a priori given, but rather as the development of methods of ordering and surveying human experience.”

Niels Bohr (1885–1962) Danish physicist

"The Unity of Human Knowledge" (October 1960)
Context: Physics is to be regarded not so much as the study of something a priori given, but rather as the development of methods of ordering and surveying human experience. In this respect our task must be to account for such experience in a manner independent of individual subjective judgement and therefore objective in the sense that it can be unambiguously communicated in ordinary human language.

Study

“Imagination is not only the uniquely human capacity to envision that which is not, and therefore the fount of all invention and innovation. In its arguably most transformative and revelatory capacity, it is the power that enables us to empathise with humans whose experiences we have never shared.”

Joanne K. Rowling (1965) British novelist, author of the Harry Potter series

Harvard address (2008)

Imagination

“Spiritual awakening is not a special feeling, state, or experience. It is not a goal or destination, somewhere to reach in the future. As the Buddha was trying to tell us (though few actually listened), it is not a superhuman achievement or attainment. You don’t have to travel to India to find it. It is not a special state of perfection reserved for the lucky or the privileged few. It is not an exclusive club. It is not an out-of-body experience, and it does not involve living in a cave, shutting off all your beautiful senses, detaching yourself from the realities of this modern world. It cannot be transmitted to you by a fancy bearded (or non-bearded) guru, nor can it be taken away or lost. You do not have to become anyone’s disciple or follower, or give away all your possessions. You do not have to join a cult. You do not have to follow anyone.

Rather, is a constant and ancient invitation – throughout every moment of your life – to trust and embrace yourself exactly as you are, in all your glorious imperfection. It is about being fully present and awake to each precious moment, coming out of the epic movie of past and future (“The Story of Me”) and showing up for life, knowing that even your feelings of non-acceptance are accepted here. It is about radically opening up to this extraordinary gift of existence, embracing both the pain and the joy of it, the bliss and the sorrow, the ecstasy and the overwhelm, the certainty and the doubt. Knowing that you are never separate from the Whole, never broken, never truly lost.”

Jeff Foster (1980) Spiritual teacher

Source: https://www.lifewithoutacentre.com/writings/shockingly-simple-principles-of-spiritual-awakening/

“Move on...holding on to any one experience will limit you.”

Swami Samarpanananda Monk, Author, Teacher

Tiya-A Parrot's Journey Home ( Page 20 )

“The spiritual experience of oneness conduces to the same insight as reasoning through science. Both convey the insight of fundamental interconnection between ourselves, other people, other forms of life, the biosphere and, ultimately, the universe. Science and spirituality, far from being mutually exclusive and conflicting elements, are complementary partners in the search for the path that can enable humanity to recover its oneness with the world. Science demonstrates the urgent and objective need for it; and spirituality testifies to its inherent value and supreme desirability.”

Alexis Karpouzos (1967)

Source: https://www.goodreads.com/author/quotes/14108295.alexis_karpouzos?page=2

Search , People , Universe , World

“: A philosopher is a man in the street who speaks the same street language. He has to speak from personal experience and try to make simple spirits understand his way of life.”

Mwanandeke Kindembo (1996) Congolese author

Personality , Understanding , Way , Life

“The more difficult the struggle, the more triumphant one is in the end.
An incredible reward is self-realization.
Fulfillment of one's own potential puts one
on a completely different
level.
It is an explosively
prodigious orgasmic experience.”

Stephie Pahlavi Zan

“Je ne regrette rien…

If it was good…it was divine.

If it was bad…it was an experience.”

Stephie Pahlavi Zan

“A strong and well-constituted man digests his experiences (deeds and misdeeds all included) just as he digests his meats, even when he has some tough morsels to swallow.”

Friedrich Nietzsche book On the Genealogy of Morality

Essay 3, Aphorism 16
On the Genealogy of Morality (1887)

Strong

“It is more pleasant and useful to go through the 'experience of the revolution' than to write about it.”

Vladimir Lenin (1870–1924) Russian politician, led the October Revolution

“The journey is part of the experience - an expression of the seriousness of one's intent. One doesn't take the A train to Mecca.”

Anthony Bourdain book A Cook's Tour

A Cook's Tour (2001)
Source: A Cook's Tour: Global Adventures in Extreme Cuisines

Parting , Training

“Staying vulnerable is a risk we have to take if we want to experience connection.”

Brené Brown (1965) US writer and professor

Source: The Gifts of Imperfection: Let Go of Who You Think You're Supposed to Be and Embrace Who You Are

“A man who has been through bitter experiences and travelled far enjoys even his sufferings after a time”

Homér The Odyssey (Cowper)

Source: The Odyssey

Travel , Suffering , Time

“Human beings had two basic orientations: HAVING and BEING
HAVING: seeks to acquire, posses things even people
BEING: focuses on the experience; exchanging, engaging, sharing with other people”

Erich Fromm (1900–1980) German social psychologist and psychoanalyst

People

“If the words 'life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness' don't include the right to experiment with your own consciousness, then the Declaration of Independence isn't worth the hemp it was written on.”

Terence McKenna (1946–2000) American ethnobotanist

Life , Happiness

“Experience, the name men give to their mistakes.”

Oscar Wilde book The Picture of Dorian Gray

Mr. Dumby, Act III.
Vera; or, The Nihilists (1880)
Variant: Experience was of no ethical value. It was merely the name men gave to their mistakes.
Variant: Experience is simply the name we give our mistakes.
Source: The Picture of Dorian Gray
Context: Experience is the name everyone gives to their mistakes. [First used by Wilde in Vera; or, The Nihilists http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vera;_or,_The_Nihilists. ]

Men

“Eternity isn't some later time. Eternity isn't a long time. Eternity has nothing to do with time. Eternity is that dimension of here and now which thinking and time cuts out. This is it. And if you don't get it here, you won't get it anywhere. And the experience of eternity right here and now is the function of life.”

Joseph Campbell The Power of Myth

Episode 2, Chapter 13-14
The Power of Myth (1988)
Context: Campbell: Eternity isn't some later time. Eternity isn't a long time. Eternity has nothing to do with time. Eternity is that dimension of here and now which thinking and time cuts out. This is it. And if you don't get it here, you won't get it anywhere. And the experience of eternity right here and now is the function of life. There's a wonderful formula that the Buddhists have for the Bodhisattva, the one whose being (sattva) is illumination (bodhi), who realizes his identity with eternity and at the same time his participation in time. And the attitude is not to withdraw from the world when you realize how horrible it is, but to realize that this horror is simply the foreground of a wonder and to come back and participate in it. "All life is sorrowful" is the first Buddhist saying, and it is. It wouldn't be life if there were not temporality involved which is sorrow. Loss, loss, loss.
Moyers: That's a pessimistic note.
Campbell: Well, you have to say yes to it, you have to say it's great this way. It's the way God intended it.

Life , Thinking , Time