“Anybody who is experiencing something is more expert in it than the experts.” 

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.

I studied Shakespeare all through high school. Both of my parents teach English and history, so it has always been around my experience as a young man.

My experiences of traveling abroad and going to Italy with my father, having to break down a gigantic electric chair to get on trains. You've got three minutes. You go to Pompeii and there are shockingly few accessible hotels in a city that was covered in volcanic ash.

All experiences are preceded by mind, having mind as their master, created by mind.

“The longer I live and the more experience I have of the world, the more I am convinced that, after all, the one thing that is most worth living for-and dying for, if need be-is the opportunity of making someone else more happy.” 

 “My experience has been that the time to test a true gentleman is to observe him when he is in contact with individuals of a race that is less fortunate than his own.”

Poetry can be dangerous, especially beautiful poetry, because it gives the illusion of having had the experience without actually going through it. In their seeking, wisdom and madness are one and the same. On the path of love, friend and stranger are one and the same.

One great question underlies our experience, whether we think about it or not: what is the purpose of life?… From the moment of birth every human being wants happiness and does not want suffering. Neither social conditioning nor education nor ideology affects this. From the very core of our being, we simply desire contentment… Therefore, it is important to discover what will bring about the greatest degree of happiness.

Our ancient experience confirms at every point that everything is linked together, everything is inseparable.

No matter what sort of difficulties, how painful experience is, if we lose our hope, that's our real disaster.

The only source of knowledge is experience.

A human being is a part of a whole, called by us ‘universe’, a part limited in time and space. He experiences himself, his thoughts and feelings as something separated from the rest… a kind of optical delusion of his consciousness. This delusion is a kind of prison for us, restricting us to our personal desires and to affection for a few persons nearest to us. Our task must be to free ourselves from this prison by widening our circle of compassion to embrace all living creatures and the whole of nature in its beauty.

I think that I do feel that my nature is to express what this self, this particular self at this time, experiences in the world. And that is so organic - I use this metaphor a lot but I'll use it again - it's like a pine tree producing pine cones, or a blackberry bush producing blackberries - it's just what happens with this being, now.

All partisan movements add to the fullness of our understanding of society as a whole. They never detract; or, in any case, one must not allow them to do so. Experience adds to experience.

In terms of mathematics textbooks, why can't you have the scale of a national market? Right now, we have a Texas textbook that's different from a California textbook that's different from a Massachusetts textbook. That's very expensive.

The most beautiful experience we can have is the mysterious – the fundamental emotion which stands at the cradle of true art and true science.

We start life with many big dreams–things we want to accomplish, create, build and experience. But if you ask anyone past the age of 40 what happened to all the dreams they had, they will most likely answer; Life.