Before you start some work always ask yourself three questions - Why am I doing it What the results might be and Will I be successful. Only when you think deeply and find satisfactory answers to these questions go ahead.

All things are difficult before they are easy.

Books give not wisdom where none was before. But where some is there reading makes it more.

However I must not indulge in homespun wisdom here before so distinguished an assembly especially as I am to be followed by a representative of science.

If they can prove that I am wrong by that time I will give it up to their wisdom but not after to any one's judgment till I see the end of another year for the Lord will begin with a new century and I will see what he will do before I will hearken to any man's judgment.

In my own personal life God plays a great role in the risk because I pray before I go into the operating room for every case and I ask him to give me wisdom to help me to know what to do - and not only for operating but for everything.

Doubt is the vestibule through which all must pass before they can enter into the temple of wisdom.

Keep me away from the wisdom which does not cry the philosophy which does not laugh and the greatness which does not bow before children.

I believe that anybody who gets married should go to a counselor for months before the wedding. I think that's going to save guys a lot of money and the ladies a lot of heartbreak.

I didn't finish my dress until about three days before my wedding - I had the flu and was stitching it from my bed. And the tulle came back from India all brown. We had to wash it for hours but that didn't dissuade me from wearing it.

My husband Jim converted to Judaism just before our wedding.

I only did karaoke once in my life. It was with Courtney Love and it was a total disaster. She pulled me on stage in front of 500 people at a wedding. I'd never done karaoke before.

A woman seldom asks advice before she has bought her wedding clothes.

We're fighting an enemy that is far different than any we have got before. It's a nontraditional kind of war and I think we need to step back recalibrate how we go about protecting our borders and protecting our people and resetting our position in the world.

Watergate enabled the Democrats to cut off all aid to South Vietnam and ensure American defeat in a war their party entered and had effectively lost before Nixon salvaged a non-Communist South Vietnam while effecting a complete American withdrawal.

It was my duty to shoot the enemy and I don't regret it. My regrets are for the people I couldn't save: Marines soldiers buddies. I'm not naive and I don't romanticize war. The worst moments of my life have come as a SEAL. But I can stand before God with a clear conscience about doing my job.

From our perspective trying to deal with this continuing campaign of terror if you will the war on terror that we're engaged in this is a continuing enterprise. The people that were involved in some of those activities before 9/11 are still out there.

It's very important to go back and keep in mind the distinction between handling these events as criminal acts which was the way we did before 9/11 and then looking at 9/11 and saying 'This is not a criminal act ' not when you destroy 16 acres of Manhattan kill 3 000 Americans blow a big hole in the Pentagon. That's an act of war.

Britain which in the years immediately before this war was rapidly losing such democratic virtues as it possessed is now being bombed and burned into democracy.

The Cold War was over long before it was officially declared dead.

I'm a lad of the '60s. I started a magazine to try and end the Vietnam war but it was a number of years before I had the profile the financial resources and the time to do more.

I had nearly finished school because I was making effort not that bad on that. But there was a law in Germany after the war. You could not make your final examination before 18 so lots of people who were late because of the way had to do it first.

Australians are coffee snobs. An influx of Italian immigrants after World War II ensured that - we probably had the word 'cappuccino' about 20 years before America. Cafe culture is really big for Aussies. We like to work hard but we take our leisure time seriously.

Anyone who has ever looked into the glazed eyes of a soldier dying on the battlefield will think hard before starting a war.