My very best friend died in a car accident when I was 16 years old. That was the hardest blow emotionally that I have ever had to endure. Suddenly, you realize tomorrow might not come. Now I live by the motto, ‘Today is what I have.’
Some years ago I became president of Columbia University and learned within 24 hours to be ready to speak at the drop of a hat, and I learned something more, the trustees were expected to be ready to speak at the passing of the hat.
Many years ago, it was my opportunity to serve as president of the Canadian Mission. There we had a branch with very limited priesthood. We always had a missionary presiding over the branch. I received a strong impression that we needed to have a member of the branch preside there.
A few years ago, the city council of Monza, Italy, barred pet owners from keeping goldfish in curved bowls… saying that it is cruel to keep a fish in a bowl with curved sides because, gazing out, the fish would have a distorted view of reality. But how do we know we have the true, undistorted picture of reality?
I want the same thing I’ve wanted since I was 7 years old. I want to be No. 1.
More than 30 years ago, when I had embarked upon the fight against child labour, it was not even considered an issue worth any discussion. It was accepted as a way of life in India, much like it was in other countries. Today, no country or business or society can throw this issue away.
I and haven’t been unemployed for 20 years. I’m an exception to the rule.
The earth is bountiful, and where her bounty fails, nitrogen drawn from the air will refertilize her womb. I developed a process for this purpose in 1900. It was perfected fourteen years later under the stress of war by German chemists.
Explain to me what Italian-American culture is. We’ve been here 100 years. Isn’t Italian-American culture American culture? That’s because we’re so diverse, in terms of intermarriage.
I personally made a decision many years ago that I wanted to crawl into portraiture because it had a lot of latitude.
Five years from now I’m probably going to look back on the things I’m doing and cringe.
At the start of my two years at Juventus, I had big plans for the club, but it turned out that the Intertoto Cup was the only medal in my desk drawer when finally they told me to pack my bags. We started the first season really well, and Conte was so important for me.
We have had 10 years of bad governance, and we may not recover if another bad government is elected.
My grandmother lived to 104 years old, and part of her success was she woke up every morning to a brand new day. She said every morning is a new gift. Her favorite hobby was collecting birthdays.
When you look out the window of a spaceship, you see entire countries, vast swaths of continents. One turn of the head covers what once took thousands of years to traverse at ground level.
You remember that my great vision came to me when I was only nine years old, and you have seen that I was not much good for anything until after I had performed the horse dance near the mouth of the Tongue River during my eighteenth summer.
The rich are always going to say that, you know, just give us more money and we’ll go out and spend more and then it will all trickle down to the rest of you. But that has not worked the last 10 years, and I hope the American public is catching on.
I’ve got two daughters. 9 years old and 6 years old. I am going to teach them first of all about values and morals. But if they make a mistake, I don’t want them punished with a baby.
When suddenly your focus changes, you see the years going by and it’s an extra reminder that you don’t want to live life with any regrets.
Years ago I went into my laboratory and said, ‘Dear Mr. Creator, please tell me what the universe was made for?’ The Great Creator answered, ‘You want to know too much for that little mind of yours. Ask for something more your size, little man.’
If people work for me over the years, I expect them to be paid what they’re owed, but I don’t expect them to be paid more than they earn.
Grant me thirty years of equal division of inheritances and a free press, and I will provide you with a republic.
I vividly remember a conversation I had many years ago in 1974, which marked a turning point in my leadership journey. I was sitting at a Holiday Inn with my friend, Kurt Campmeyer, when he asked me if I had a personal growth plan. I didn’t. In fact, I didn’t even know you were supposed to have one.
The years between fifty and seventy are the hardest. You are always being asked to do things, and yet you are not decrepit enough to turn them down.
You’re going to die. You’re going to be dead. It could be 20 years, it could be tomorrow, anytime. So am I. I mean, we’re just going to be gone. The world’s going to go on without us. All right now. You do your job in the face of that, and how seriously you take yourself you decide for yourself.
What we did ten years ago with the Playstation was a phenomenal success story for the company. That product had a ten year life cycle, which has never been done in this industry.
It’s silly talking about how many years we will have to spend in the jungles of Vietnam when we could pave the whole country and put parking stripes on it and still be home by Christmas.
But my system for over 30 years has been this: When stocks are attractive, you buy them. Sure, they can go lower. I’ve bought stocks at $12 that went to $2, but then they later went to $30.
When I was six years old, Mom and Dad gave me a guitar for my birthday, and Daddy taught me the chords to ‘You Are My Sunshine.’
Over recent years, urbanisation, globalisation and the destruction of local cultures has led to a rise in the prevalence of mental illness in the developing world.
My goal is to cut government in half in twenty-five years, to get it down to the size where we can drown it in the bathtub.
I didn’t even have a birth certificate until I was 9 years old, which meant that, according to the state of Idaho and the federal government, I just didn’t exist.
You need not go back four thousand years for heroines. The world is filled with them today. They do not belong to any nation, nor to any religion, nor exclusively to any race. Wherever woman is found, they are found.
Sister Hinckley and I are learning that the so-called golden years are laced with lead.
In the nineties, everybody wants to talk about their rights and privileges. Twenty-five years ago, people talked about their obligations and responsibilities.
(On seeing a former lover for the first time in years) I thought I told you to wait in the car.
I have many years to get better and better, and that has to be my ambition. The day you think there is no improvements to be made is a sad one for any player.
Sir Hugh Greene is the man I hold most responsible for the state of our country today. For 11 years hardly a week went by without a sniping reference to me. And he gave access to anyone who was prepared to say anything morally subversive.
Mothers really were not built to raise babies not only by themselves, but with only a partner. For millions of years, a woman had much more than just her husband to help rear her young… This whole idea of ‘it takes a village to raise a child’ is exactly how we’re supposed to live.
If some years were added to my life, I would give fifty to the study of the Yi, and then I might come to be without great faults.
I was training with Cristiano Ronaldo, Kaka, and I was only 16 or 17 years old. I was going 120 percent! It was a dream come true.
I might run from her for a thousand years and she is still my baby child. Our love is so furious that we burn each other out.
A life lived with integrity – even if it lacks the trappings of fame and fortune is a shining star in whose light others may follow in the years to come.
It’s odd the things that people remember. Parents will arrange a birthday party, certain it will stick in your mind forever. You’ll have a nice time, then two years later you’ll be like, ‘There was a pony there? Really? And a clown with one leg?’
It is a sobering thought that when Mozart was my age, he had been dead for two years.
Over the years, I’ve learned that if you can just hang in there and, regardless of what’s presented to you, take it as a challenge and try to bring in something fresh, then it works.
I had no political background. That’s why PM Bhutto gave me the responsibility of the nuclear programme, and we acquired nuclear capability in a span of mere six years, which was a great milestone.
Wisdom is not attained by years, but by ability.
The one important thing I have learned over the years is the difference between taking one’s work seriously and taking one’s self seriously. The first is imperative and the second is disastrous.
Comedians’ first ten minutes usually stay with them the first several years of their career. It’s their mission statement. Their disclaimer that lets people know who they are. Or were. It’s also a good time to make fun of your name if you have a funny or strange one.
A country that cannot feed itself cannot have self-pride, and in the mid-’60s 20 percent of all the wheat produced in America came into India. We were agriculturally a basket case. And 15 years later, 20 years later, we have become an agricultural power. This is the famous Green Revolution.
