Richard N. Haass Quotes

Some people say, I'd give anything to be 30 again. Well, I really wouldn't. I didn't enjoy being 30.

When I was younger, I wanted to be older. Now I am older, I am not quite so sure.

The real sadness of fifty is not that you change so much but that you change so little.

If ever you get to be my age," said the old woman, "you will know all there is to know about regrets, and you will know that one more, here or there, will make no difference in the long run.

I think that as you get older, you mellow out a lot more. Having been through the ups and downs in life, I feel more qualified to play the blues.

I know you think that when you're 35, 45, 55, you'll be different. But I'm going to let you in on a bit of a secret. You're going to look different, and your life is going to be different, but in your head you'll always be that 16-year-old girl.

If you live long enough, you'll experience everything.

I'm a grown man. You know, I've been in a lot of scrapes, but I never felt like I got so - there are probably a lot of things I should have done that I didn't do.

When I can look life in the eyes, grown calm and very coldly wise, life will have given me the truth, and taken in exchange - my youth.

Life would be infinitely happier if we could only be born at the age of eighty and gradually approach eighteen.

We pay when old for the excesses of youth.

We do things in our past that we need to do at the time.

The excess of our youth are checks written against our age and they are payable with interest thirty years later.

Life is a matter of really tough choices.

I wouldn't want to be 20 again for anything.

Youth is a blunder; Manhood a struggle, Old Age a regret.

I think most people are not willing to make the tough choices.

What might seem like a good idea to somebody at 21 is probably not going to seem like a good idea at 50, but you don't know that until you get there.

In New York, I much prefer playing older because as characters get older, they get more interesting.

A young man is a theory, an old man is a fact.

What's a man's age? He must hurry more, that's all; Cram in a day, what his youth took a year to hold.

Growing old is mandatory; growing up is optional.

I do not want to be young again.

You have to make difficult choices in your life, and you just have to be happy with them.

As you age, you have this vast cauldron of experience to draw from. Some of the experiences are great; some of them you wish you'd never had. But all of them shape the work that you do and the person you become. It's just inevitable.