Every book I've written has been a different attempt to understand something and the success or failure of the previous one is irrelevant. I write the book I want.

I can't say I'm not grateful to have journalists writing about me as a genius. But I know it's not true. I'm not confused. I understand that success comes through a lot of failure and a lot of very embarrassing failure. People want to create the next Facebook but they are too afraid to create the next Facemash.

Nixon's grand mistake was his failure to understand that Americans are forgiving and if he had admitted error early and apologized to the country he would have escaped.

I don't understand a way to work other than bold-facedly running towards failure.

As long as the G.O.P. led by its increasingly visible women continues to insist that the problem is not their policies but women's failure to understand their own lives and interests the gender gap won't go away.

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?

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.

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.

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.

There are a lot of obstacles in the way of our understanding animal intelligence - not the least being that we can't even agree whether nonhuman species are conscious. We accept that chimps and dolphins experience awareness we like to think dogs and cats do. But what about mice and newts? What about a fly? Is anything going on there at all?

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.

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

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.

To use the same words is not a sufficient guarantee of understanding one must use the same words for the same genus of inward experience ultimately one must have one's experiences in common.