Bill Cosby Quotes

I knew what I wanted to do when I was 13 and I had to go through four years of high school to get out. That's a blessing, because I never had to lay on my bed staring up at the ceiling going, 'What am I going to do with my life?'

Even though I pretty much made my own decisions early on, when I was younger I tended to overbook my life.

When you're in your 20s, your 30s, even, you have - at least, I had - vast ambitions, and you sit around mooning about these things, and you're depressed, because you haven't done them. And it takes you a long time to come to the realization that if you can't be John Updike, well, then, you can't.

I learnt a lot about myself, I learnt a lot about other people and the problems they have. If I was lucky enough to live to a hundred, how I will feel about two per cent of my life being that way, I don't know.

I thought I was going to be a bum the rest of my life.

I should have been smart enough to stay happy. But my ambition ruled my life.

The human life is all one thing, like a blade tracing loops on the ice: a little kid, a twenty-three-year-old infantry sergeant, a middle-aged writer knowing guilt and sorrow.

At 49, I can say something I never would have said when I was a player, that I'm a better person because of my failures and disgraces.

Maybe something that's acceptable in your teens or 20s is unacceptable in your 30s or 40s.

People assume I'm out there having this great life, but money doesn't erase the pain. When you're young you barrel through life, making choices without thinking of repercussions. A few years down the line, you wake up in a certain place and wonder how the hell you got there.

There is a very good chance I could have been a screw-up for the rest of my life.

The saddest thing in life is wasted talent and the choices you make will shape your life forever.

All my life, I just felt that I should have finished my education.

I'm 47 years old, and I have to accept the fact that I'm probably not going to set the world on fire... If I was going to do that, I would have done it by now.

I didn't go to uni and although I don't have regrets in my life, I have two nephews and I'd encourage them to go to uni as I don't think you need to grow up too quick.

I didn't finish college, and I was very sad about that because I don't think I gave myself a chance to learn, to prove to myself that I could learn.

I'm older, and I wish that a lot of things that I did in my life, I didn't do, but I'm able to talk about it.

As you get older, you have more and more layers of experience to forgive, more layers of heartbreak, more layers of what you might think of as failure.

Now, more than ever, I realize just how illusory my undeserved success has been. I still hold out some hope of doing better, but age and unhappiness have sapped my strength.

Men regret their life has been ill-spent, but this does not always induce them to make a better use of the time they have yet to live.

By the time a man is wise enough to watch his step, he's too old to go anywhere.

People who behave at forty as they did at twenty must sometimes wonder why their charm is not working.

Whatever you do, don’t wake up at 65 years old and think about what you should have done with your life.

We make messes of our lives, but every now and then, we manage to do something that's exactly right. The challenge is figuring out which is which.

The saddest summary of a life contains three descriptions: could have, might have, and should have.