The problem is that at a lot of big companies, process becomes a substitute for thinking. You're encouraged to behave like a little gear in a complex machine. Frankly, it allows you to keep people who aren't that smart, who aren't that creative.

Rarely do we find men who willingly engage in hard, solid thinking. There is an almost universal quest for easy answers and half-baked solutions. Nothing pains some people more than having to think.

Thinking is more interesting than knowing, but less interesting than looking.

I can remember my father gave me a huge history of football for my 12th birthday - I used to read that a lot. I can remember thinking it was cool that something I was interested in even had a history. Most things I loved didn't.

I know that might sound silly coming from someone my age, but I remember on my 14th birthday having a crisis like my mom should be having. I kept thinking that I was getting older, and I haven't really accomplished anything. I remember thinking that I better accomplish something real soon.

By the time of my ninth birthday, I had become a bit of a socialist, as I am said by conservative colleagues to be to this day. I went on within the next few years to volunteer as an envelope stuffer for the American Labor Party, and my political thinking has not shifted measurably since that time.

Why, on my mother's birthday, am I thinking about 'Father Knows Best?' At our house, mother knew best at least as often as father did, but then the title of the old sitcom, a homogenized portrait of American family life, was meant to be slightly sardonic.

Every year before a big competition, I get hurt doing stuff I should not be doing. One year it was my little brother's 12th birthday. We all played hide-and-seek late at night. I climbed up a 30-foot tree, thinking he'd never catch me. I tripped and fell on one of the branches and I hit my head.

I wasn't very good about juggling family and my career. I was interested in who was coming to the children's birthday party, what my son was writing. I was thinking about Legos.

I remember for my 18th birthday, I was going to get a tattoo, and I made the mistake of thinking I was a man and telling my father, and he was like, 'Oh yeah? You better tattoo a new address on your arm, because you're not living here!' And that was the end of that discussion.

I gave a funny speech at my wife's birthday party, and I'm thinking, 'Hey, I've still got it.'

Wishful thinking is not idealism. It is self-indulgence at best and self-exaltation at worst. In either case, it is usually at the expense of others. In other words, it is the opposite of idealism.

If you live your life thinking about your legacy or what you're going to leave, you don't worry than you add another concern. Just live your life every single day, do the best you can and that's more of my motto than leaving a legacy.

I think all jocks have a sensitive side. It's just, will they show it to anybody? Will they let their guard down and stop being tough and the cool jock guy around their friends, or just relax? I don't know if it's best to say opening up, but just relax and really say what you're actually thinking, and not what you think people want to hear.

The breaks you take from work pay you back manifold when you return because you come back with a fresher mind and newer thinking. Some of your best ideas come when you're on vacation.

If you're thinking of coming to America, this is what it's like: you've got your Comfort Inn, you've got your Best Western, and you've got your Red Lobster where you eat. Everybody's very fat, everybody's very stupid and everybody's very rude - it's not a holiday programme, it's the truth.

Remembering that you are going to die is the best way I know to avoid the trap of thinking you have something to lose. You are already naked. There is no reason not to follow your heart.

I think it's very important to have a feedback loop, where you're constantly thinking about what you've done and how you could be doing it better. I think that's the single best piece of advice: constantly think about how you could be doing things better and questioning yourself.

Best to live lightly, unthinkingly.

The best ideas come as jokes. Make your thinking as funny as possible.

I had daydreamed through many performances of Swan Lake, thinking the dancing tutus only ever conveyed one aspect of swans: their beauty gliding on water. I wondered what it would be like to use male dancers and bring out swans' aggressive, muscular side.

Beauty can't amuse you, but brainwork - reading, writing, thinking - can.

Humanism was not wrong in thinking that truth, beauty, liberty, and equality are of infinite value, but in thinking that man can get them for himself without grace.

I like to embrace natural beauty. I try to get at least 8 hours of sleep, drinking a lot of water and exercising.