Alan Greenspan Quotes

Nothing is as simple as we hope it will be.

We seem to invest so much time and belief that those things are stable in some way - something to build towards, or something to use to better understand where we come from. So often those expectations are just so out of line with how the universe works. I don't see it as a productive way of seeing the world, so, when I deal with that stuff formally - or when I try to allow it to inspire me - I'm open to it twisting itself up.

They didn't understand it, but like so many unfortunate events in life, just because you don't understand it doesn't mean it isn't so.

We ought not to desire the impossible.

I shall start at the beginning. Though of coarse, the beginning is never where you think it is.

I don;t think there's anything wrong with being a dreamer. There is not. But dreams have ways of turning into nightmares.

Life is not what you expected it to be.

In my experience, the most staunchly held views are based on ignorance or accepted dogma, not carefully considered accumulations of facts. The more you expose the intricacies and realtities of the situation, the less clear-cut things become.

I must confess that I know nothing whatsoever about true underlying reality, never having met any.

We wake, if ever at all, to mystery.

A lot of Americans like happy endings, but life does not necessarily have a happy ending.

Hope was always out ahead of fact, possibility obscured the outlines of reality.

All you know is what you think you know, but that isn't always what's real.

Some people never seem to learn from experience. No matter how often they had seen the lion devour the lamb, they continued to cling to the hope that the nature of the beast might change. If only the lion could get to know the lamb better, they argued, or talk matters over.

Things are really weird around here, and most of us don't know everything. Half of everything.

Whatever Nature has in store for mankind, unpleasant as it may be, men must accept, for ignorance is never better than knowledge.

How wrong people always were when they said: 'It's better to know the worst than go on not knowing either way.' No; they had it exactly the wrong way round. Tell me the truth, doctor, I'd sooner know. But only if the truth is what I want to hear.

Even when you don't know, you're supposed to know.

I don't know what it is I'm doing. But it's not that. Despite all evidence to the contrary.

Perhaps a normal man is supposed to be stupid-how do we know? Perhaps it's even very beautiful.

Innocence gave me confidence to go up against reality.

If you aren't the woman I think you are, then this isn't the world I thought it was.

People's fantasies are what give them problems. If you didn't have fantasies you wouldn't have problems because you'd just take whatever was there.