Quotes and anectdotes from the wise to the foolish, and the courageous to the drunk

experience

A man who carries a cat by the tail learns something he can learn in no other way. 98 quotes from Mark Twain

But human experience is usually paradoxical, that means incongruous with the phrases of current talk or even current philosophy. 52 quotes from George Eliot

But inner experience is only one source of human knowledge. 14 wisdom & wit from Muhammad Iqbal

Ends and purposes, whether they exist as conscious or subconscious tendencies, form the wrap and woof of our conscious experience. 14 other quotes from Muhammad Iqbal

Everything has been said before, but since nobody listens we have to keep going back and beginning all over again. 22 views from Andre Gide

Experience teaches us to be most on our guard to protect liberty when the government's purposes are beneficent. 7 quotes from Louis D. Brandeis

Experience: that most brutal of teachers. But you learn, my God do you learn. 25 quotes from C. S. Lewis

Good judgment comes from experience, and a lot of that comes from bad judgment. 57 sayings from Will Rogers

In spite of his practical ability, some of his experience had petrified into maxims and quotations. 52 quotes from George Eliot

Information's pretty thin stuff unless mixed with experience. 4 more quotes from Clarence Day

Is there anyone so wise as to learn by the experience of others? 78 thoughts from Voltaire

It is an axiom, enforced by all the experience of the ages, that they who rule industrially will rule politically. 11 wisdom & wit from Aneurin Bevan

No man was ever so completely skilled in the conduct of life, as not to receive new information from age and experience. 19 quotes from Jonathan Swift

Nothing is a waste of time if you use the experience wisely. 4 wisdom & wit from Auguste Rodin

Observation more than books and experience more than persons, are the prime educators. 13 quotes from Amos Bronson Alcott

The key to education is the experience of beauty. 29 views from Friedrich Schiller

The standpoint of the man who relies on religious experience for capturing Reality must always remain individual and incommunicable. 14 views from Muhammad Iqbal

When you have really exhausted an experience you always reverence and love it. 52 other sayings from Albert Camus

Wisdom and penetration are the fruit of experience, not the lessons of retirement and leisure. Great necessities call out great virtues. 5 more quotes from Abigail Adams

You cannot create experience. You must undergo it. 52 quotes from Albert Camus

Dramatic experience is not logical it may be subdued to the kind of coherence that we indicate when we speak, in criticism, of form. 3 views from Allen Tate

The resistance of a woman is not always a proof of her virtue, but more frequently of her experience. 7 other quotes from Ninon de L'Enclos

All growth is a leap in the dark, a spontaneous unpremeditated act without benefit of experience. 23 wisdom & wit from Henry Miller

At every step the child should be allowed to meet the real experience of life the thorns should never be plucked from his roses. 4 quotes from Ellen Key

Breathe-in experience, breathe-out poetry. 3 quotes from Muriel Rukeyser

Experience is a good school. But the fees are high. 14 wisdom & wit from Heinrich Heine

Experience is the child of thought, and thought is the child of action. 75 quotes from Benjamin Disraeli

Experience seems to most of us to lead to conclusions, but empiricism has sworn never to draw them. 46 other thoughts from George Santayana

Happiness isn't something you experience it's something you remember. 4 more views from Oscar Levant

In times of rapid change, experience could be your worst enemy. 12 sayings from J. Paul Getty

Life is like playing a violin solo in public and learning the instrument as one goes on. 68 other views from Samuel Butler

Parents lend children their experience and a vicarious memory children endow their parents with a vicarious immortality. 46 quotes from George Santayana

The deepest experience of the creator is feminine, for it is experience of receiving and bearing. 9 thoughts from Rainer Maria Rilke

The great difficulty in education is to get experience out of ideas. 46 wisdom & wit from George Santayana

The soul should always stand ajar, ready to welcome the ecstatic experience. 26 more quotes from Emily Dickinson

The wisdom of the wise and the experience of the ages are perpetuated by quotations. 75 other sayings from Benjamin Disraeli

The word experience is like a shrapnel shell, and bursts into a thousand meanings. 46 quotes from George Santayana

There is no wider gulf in the universe than yawns between those on the hither and thither side of vital experience. 11 other quotes from Rebecca West

Both expectations and memories are more than mere images founded on previous experience. 3 quotes from Samuel Alexander

But constant experience shows us that every man invested with power is apt to abuse it, and to carry his authority as far as it will go. 10 quotes from Charles de Secondat

Every secret of a writer's soul, every experience of his life, every quality of his mind is written large in his works. 30 views from Virginia Woolf

Experience is what you get while looking for something else. 4 views from Federico Fellini

Experience keeps a dear school, but fools will learn in no other. 96 more quotes from Benjamin Franklin

Genius is the ability to renew one's emotions in daily experience. 23 sayings from Paul Cezanne

Have you noticed in your past experience that your kind interpretations were almost always truer than you harsh one? 2 sayings from Lawrence G. Lovasik

If merely 'feeling good' could decide, drunkenness would be the supremely valid human experience. 40 quotes from William James

Life is the only real counselor wisdom unfiltered through personal experience does not become a part of the moral tissue. 6 quotes from Edith Wharton

Reasoning draws a conclusion, but does not make the conclusion certain, unless the mind discovers it by the path of experience. 2 other quotes from Roger Bacon

Recommend virtue to your children it alone, not money, can make them happy. I speak from experience. 12 views from Ludwig van Beethoven

Sleep - the most beautiful experience in life - except drink. 24 thoughts from W. C. Fields

Studies perfect nature and are perfected still by experience. 67 quotes from Francis Bacon

There is science, logic, reason there is thought verified by experience. And then there is California. 10 other quotes from Edward Abbey

Travel, in the younger sort, is a part of education in the elder, a part of experience. 67 wisdom & wit from Francis Bacon

We choose our joys and sorrows long before we experience them. 56 more quotes from Khalil Gibran

By experience we find out a short way by a long wandering. 6 quotes from Roger Ascham

In almost everything, experience is more valuable than precept. 12 other quotes from Quintilian

All experience is an arch, to build upon. 22 more sayings from Henry Adams

An enormous part of our mature experience cannot not be expressed in words. 19 quotes from Alfred North Whitehead

Art is the imposing of a pattern on experience, and our aesthetic enjoyment is recognition of the pattern. 19 other wisdom & wit from Alfred North Whitehead

I have never found, in a long experience of politics, that criticism is ever inhibited by ignorance. 6 quotes from Harold MacMillan

In long experience I find that a man who trusts nobody is apt to be the kind of man nobody trusts. 6 more quotes from Harold MacMillan

In wisdom gathered over time I have found that every experience is a form of exploration. 13 wisdom & wit from Ansel Adams

Intuition is the very force or activity of the soul in its experience through whatever has been the experience of the soul itself. 4 more quotes from Henry Reed

It has been my experience that folks who have no vices have very few virtues. 47 quotes from Abraham Lincoln

It is a common experience that a problem difficult at night is resolved in the morning after the committee of sleep has worked on it. 9 quotes from John Steinbeck

One thorn of experience is worth a whole wilderness of warning. 24 sayings from James Russell Lowell

Our wisdom comes from our experience, and our experience comes from our foolishness. 5 views from Sacha Guitry

Skill is the unified force of experience, intellect and passion in their operation. 45 quotes from John Ruskin

We should not look back unless it is to derive useful lessons from past errors, and for the purpose of profiting by dearly bought experience. 30 views from George Washington

I was thinking that we all learn by experience, but some of us have to go to summer school. 10 quotes from Peter De Vries

Physics is experience, arranged in economical order. 2 other sayings from Ernst Mach

Experience is the teacher of all things. 12 sayings from Julius Caesar

I don't believe people are looking for the meaning of life as much as they are looking for the experience of being alive. 18 quotes from Joseph Campbell

I don't have to have faith, I have experience. 18 quotes from Joseph Campbell

It took me years to understand that words are often as important as experience, because words make experience last. 6 quotes from William Morris

It was the experience of mystery - even if mixed with fear - that engendered religion. 105 wisdom & wit from Albert Einstein

The most beautiful thing we can experience is the mysterious. It is the source of all true art and science. 105 quotes from Albert Einstein

The only source of knowledge is experience. 105 thoughts from Albert Einstein

The spectacles of experience through them you will see clearly a second time. 11 sayings from Henrik Ibsen

The only time I ever went hunting I remembered it as a grisly experience. 7 more quotes from Gloria Swanson

But although all our knowledge begins with experience, it does not follow that it arises from experience. 13 quotes from Immanuel Kant

Deep experience is never peaceful. 10 quotes from Henry James

Doesn't all experience crumble in the end to mere literary material? 4 quotes from Ellen Glasgow

Experience does not err. Only your judgments err by expecting from her what is not in her power. 27 sayings from Leonardo da Vinci

Experience without theory is blind, but theory without experience is mere intellectual play. 13 quotes from Immanuel Kant

Experiences are savings which a miser puts aside. Wisdom is an inheritance which a wastrel cannot exhaust. 8 quotes from Karl Kraus

I had rather have a fool to make me merry than experience to make me sad and to travel for it too! 81 quotes from William Shakespeare

It is beyond a doubt that all our knowledge that begins with experience. 13 other sayings from Immanuel Kant

Nothing which has entered into our experience is ever lost. 11 other quotes from William Ellery Channing

Prudence is but experience, which equal time, equally bestows on all men, in those things they equally apply themselves unto. 8 other quotes from Thomas Hobbes

There is nothing so easy to learn as experience and nothing so hard to apply. 42 quotes from Josh Billings

Capital isn't that important in business. Experience isn't that important. You can get both of these things. What is important is ideas. 6 quotes from Harvey S. Firestone

The mind uses its faculty for creativity only when experience forces it to do so. 5 quotes from Henri Poincare

All experience is subjective. 4 quotes from Gregory Bateson

Each morning when I awake, I experience again a supreme pleasure - that of being Salvador Dali. 11 other wisdom & wit from Salvador Dali

Experience has shown how deeply the seeds of war are planted by economic rivalry and social injustice. 26 other thoughts from Harry S. Truman

Experience praises the most happy the one who made the most people happy. 21 thoughts from Karl Marx

Experience which was once claimed by the aged is now claimed exclusively by the young. 52 sayings from Gilbert K. Chesterton

Few people even scratch the surface, much less exhaust the contemplation of their own experience. 2 quotes from Randolph Bourne

I have but one lamp by which my feet are guided, and that is the lamp of experience. 10 other thoughts from Patrick Henry

If your faith is opposed to experience, to human learning and investigation, it is not worth the breath used in giving it expression. 23 wisdom & wit from E. W. Howe

Life can only be understood backwards but it must be lived forwards. 22 quotes from Soren Kierkegaard

Life has a certain flavor for those who have fought and risked all that the sheltered and protected can never experience. 11 thoughts from John Stuart Mill

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. 52 sayings from Gilbert K. Chesterton

My experience of the world is that things left to themselves don't get right. 33 sayings from Thomas Huxley

So that ends my first experience of matrimony, which I always thought a highly over-rated performance. 5 more wisdom & wit from Isadora Duncan

The act of birth is the first experience of anxiety, and thus the source and prototype of the affect of anxiety. 26 quotes from Sigmund Freud

The character and history of each child may be a new and poetic experience to the parent, if he will let it. 9 wisdom & wit from Margaret Fuller

The first essential in writing about anything is that the writer should have no experience of the matter. 5 more quotes from Isadora Duncan

The questions which one asks oneself begin, at least, to illuminate the world, and become one's key to the experience of others. 24 other quotes from James A. Baldwin

The reward of suffering is experience. 26 sayings from Harry S. Truman

The years teach much which the days never know. 135 more quotes from Ralph Waldo Emerson

There are many truths of which the full meaning cannot be realized until personal experience has brought it home. 11 other thoughts from John Stuart Mill

We are not human beings having a spiritual experience. We are spiritual beings having a human experience. 5 views from Pierre Teilhard de Chardin

What one has not experienced, one will never understand in print. 5 sayings from Isadora Duncan

You are not a human being in search of a spiritual experience. You are a spiritual being immersed in a human experience. 5 views from Pierre Teilhard de Chardin

Man tells his aspiration in his God but in his demon he shows his depth of experience. 9 other quotes from Margaret Fuller

The wisdom of the wise, and the experience of ages, may be preserved by quotation. 3 more quotes from Isaac D'Israeli

Women have no sympathy and my experience of women is almost as large as Europe. 4 wisdom & wit from Florence Nightingale

A failure is a man who has blundered, but is not able to cash in the experience. 59 thoughts from Elbert Hubbard

Experience isn't interesting until it begins to repeat itself. In fact, till it does that, it hardly is experience. 10 other views from Elizabeth Bowen

I've learned from experience that the greater part of our happiness or misery depends on our dispositions and not on our circumstances. 2 more views from Martha Washington

In our society, daily experience teaches the individual to want and need a never-ending supply of new toys and drugs. 20 more views from Christopher Lasch

My own experience is that a certain kind of genius among students is best brought out in bed. 3 other thoughts from Allen Ginsberg

Two things control men's nature, instinct and experience. 57 quotes from Blaise Pascal

None of us feels the true love of God till we realize how wicked we are. But you can't teach people that - they have to learn by experience. 3 other views from Dorothy L. Sayers

An optimist is a guy that has never had much experience. 18 sayings from Don Marquis

Disease is an experience of a so-called mortal mind. It is fear made manifest on the body. 8 sayings from Mary Baker Eddy

Everybody experiences far more than he understands. Yet it is experience, rather than understanding, that influences behavior. 19 sayings from Marshall McLuhan

Experience is not what happens to you it's what you do with what happens to you. 45 quotes from Aldous Huxley

Experience teaches only the teachable. 45 more sayings from Aldous Huxley

Follow that will and that way which experience confirms to be your own. 19 other quotes from Carl Jung

If history repeats itself, and the unexpected always happens, how incapable must Man be of learning from experience. 115 views from George Bernard Shaw

Many of the insights of the saint stem from their experience as sinners. 31 other quotes from Eric Hoffer

Men are wise in proportion, not to their experience, but to their capacity for experience. 115 wisdom & wit from George Bernard Shaw

Never, for the sake of peace and quiet, deny your own experience or convictions. 13 more sayings from Dag Hammarskjold

Simplicity is the most difficult thing to secure in this world it is the last limit of experience and the last effort of genius. 9 more quotes from George Sand

The only real security that a man can have in this world is a reserve of knowledge, experience and ability. 32 views from Henry Ford

The value of experience is not in seeing much, but in seeing wisely. 11 quotes from William Osler

We deem those happy who from the experience of life have learnt to bear its ills without being overcome by them. 19 other thoughts from Carl Jung

We learn from experience that men never learn anything from experience. 115 wisdom & wit from George Bernard Shaw

Wealth is the ability to fully experience life. 117 other views from Henry David Thoreau

Boredom is the dream bird that hatches the egg of experience. A rustling in the leaves drives him away. 7 more views from Walter Benjamin

Experience is the extract of suffering. 6 more quotes from Arthur Helps

Experience teaches us that we do not always receive the blessings we ask for in prayer. 8 quotes from Mary Baker Eddy

No man's knowledge here can go beyond his experience. 15 more views from John Locke

Not the fruit of experience, but experience itself, is the end. 3 other sayings from Walter Pater

An identity would seem to be arrived at by the way in which the person faces and uses his experience. 3 other wisdom & wit from James Baldwin

Certainly I've had the experience of thinking a person was one thing, and finding out they were another. 2 more wisdom & wit from John Hawkes

A proverb is a short sentence based on long experience. 21 quotes from Miguel de Cervantes

All that I know I learned after I was thirty. 2 views from Georges Clemenceau

All theory is against freedom of the will all experience for it. 63 views from Samuel Johnson

Any place that anyone can learn something useful from someone with experience is an educational institution. 4 more wisdom & wit from Al Capp

Common sense is the measure of the possible it is composed of experience and prevision it is calculation applied to life. 24 wisdom & wit from Henri Frederic Amiel

If you want to run, run a mile. If you want to experience a different life, run a marathon. 6 wisdom & wit from Emil Zatopek

Love is an emotion that is based on an opinion of women that is impossible for those who have had any experience with them. 60 quotes from H. L. Mencken

Proverbs are short sentences drawn from long experience. 21 sayings from Miguel de Cervantes

We come altogether fresh and raw into the several stages of life, and often find ourselves without experience, despite our years. 90 other sayings from Francois de La Rochefoucauld

Women always excel men in that sort of wisdom which comes from experience. To be a woman is in itself a terrible experience. 60 sayings from H. L. Mencken

Experience is one thing you can't get for nothing. 100 thoughts from Oscar Wilde

Experience is simply the name we give our mistakes. 100 other wisdom & wit from Oscar Wilde

Experience is the only prophecy of wise men. 8 quotes from Alphonse de Lamartine

Experience, as a desire for experience, does not come off. We must not study ourselves while having an experience. 103 sayings from Friedrich Nietzsche

Loneliness is and always has been the central and inevitable experience of every man. 4 other quotes from Thomas Wolfe

My experience has been that work is almost the best way to pull oneself out of the depths. 30 quotes from Eleanor Roosevelt

Nothing ever becomes real till it is experienced. 19 sayings from John Keats

Once we believe in ourselves, we can risk curiosity, wonder, spontaneous delight, or any experience that reveals the human spirit. 13 quotes from e. e. cummings

People grow through experience if they meet life honestly and courageously. This is how character is built. 30 sayings from Eleanor Roosevelt

Refusal to believe until proof is given is a rational position denial of all outside of our own limited experience is absurd. 2 more quotes from Annie Besant

The belief that all genuine education comes about through experience does not mean that all experiences are genuinely or equally educative. 9 more views from John Dewey

To most men experience is like the stern lights of a ship, which illuminate only the track it has passed. 24 more quotes from Samuel Taylor Coleridge

Unwearied ceaseless effort is the price that must be paid for turning faith into a rich infallible experience. 100 more wisdom & wit from Mahatma Gandhi

War is delightful to those who have had no experience of it. 15 sayings from Desiderius Erasmus

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. 33 more sayings from Dwight D. Eisenhower