Without failure there is no sweetness in success. There's no understanding of it.

We need to accept that we won't always make the right decisions that we'll screw up royally sometimes - understanding that failure is not the opposite of success it's part of success.

Ultimately all human activities have as their goal the realization of happiness. Why then have we ended up producing the opposite result? Could the underlying cause be our failure to correctly understand the true nature of happiness?

The Bush Administration's failure to be consistently involved in helping Israel achieve peace with the Palestinians has been both wrong for our friendship with Israel as well as badly damaging to our standing in the Arab world.

It has always seemed strange to me... the things we admire in men kindness and generosity openness honesty understanding and feeling are the concomitants of failure in our system. And those traits we detest sharpness greed acquisitiveness meanness egotism and self-interest are the traits of success. And while men admire the quality of the first they love the produce of the second.

I've come to believe that all my past failure and frustration were actually laying the foundation for the understandings that have created the new level of living I now enjoy.

No student of Chinese history can say that the Chinese are incapable of religious experience even when judged by the standards of medieval Europe or pious India.

You're working on being a father so that is something that when you experience it you'll understand the profundity of wanting to protect something dear to you.

The underlying message of the Lancet article is that if you want to understand aggressive behaviour in children look to the social and emotional environment in which they are growing up and the values they bring to the viewing experience.

I think a lot comes from having the experience of doing stand-up comedy. It allows you to figure out the psychology of an audience what things are funny and not.

The act of writing... is the act of trying to understand why my opinion is what it is. And ultimately I think that's the same experience the reader has when they pick up one of my books.

My father respected and admired my mother and was a person who was always standing by my side encouraging me to do more and believed in my capacity. So in that sense my own experience was very good in becoming an empowered woman. From early on I carried that strong message: 'You can do it.' So I never had any doubt that women can do a lot.

In my experience there is only one motivation and that is desire. No reasons or principle contain it or stand against it.

But beginners to the World Economics Forum have to understand there is no single Davos experience and there is no single Davos community either. There are numerous tribes who interact only at a minimal level.

Bottom up thinkers try to start from experience and move from experience to understanding. They don't start with certain general principles they think beforehand are likely to be true they just hope to find out what reality is like.

The American experience influenced my understanding of individuality basic human rights freedom of expression and the rights and responsibilities of citizens.

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

It took me years to understand that words are often as important as experience because words make experience last.

Motherhood has completely changed me. It's just about like the most completely humbling experience that I've ever had. I think that it puts you in your place because it really forces you to address the issues that you claim to believe in and if you can't stand up to those principles when you're raising a child forget it.

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.

Anybody who has gone through a life-changing experience will tell you there is a different understanding of what is real and what is important and when you are going through different moments you can reflect and go 'I have been through worse.'

I understand now that the vulnerability I've always felt is the greatest strength a person can have. You can't experience life without feeling life. What I've learned is that being vulnerable to somebody you love is not a weakness it's a strength.

Everybody experiences far more than he understands. Yet it is experience rather than understanding that influences behavior.

I think it's been hard for people to understand how Islam can be a good religion and yet the Islamists are evil. Those of us who have had experience with Islam understand this just as we understand the difference between snake handlers and people going to church on Sunday morning.