Sal Khan Quotes

I was told once if I kept breaking things on my legs, that I wasn't going to be able to walk soon, you know? I wanted to be a pro skateboarder, but it was too hard. I was trying, but it wasn't going to happen.

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.

In theory, I always think I should totally go back to school, because I don't want to start sinking slowly... I want to learn, blah blah blah. Then I think about actually going and sitting in classes and, man, it sounds terrible.

I could have had class. I could have been a contender.

On the plains of hesitation lie the blackened bones of countless millions who at the dawn of victory lay down to rest, and in resting died.

I wanted to be a serious actress, but of course that didn't really happen.

I have dreamed much and have done very little.

Nagging questions remain: Where is the line between making the most of one's potential and reaching for the unattainable? Where is the line between education as a tool and education as a kind of magic? The line is blurred and that is why when education fails, disillusionment is so bitter.

I always wanted to play in the Super Bowl. That never happened. It hurts. I'm not going to lie about it. It's reality. You deal with it.

When I finally got there, to where I thought was the top, I wasn't doing what I was doing in the beginning. I was not happy.

I am constantly hungry for growth and that's what drives me. Success or failure of a project doesn't drive me.

My parents were ambitious people, my father especially, whose entire life was devoted to rising above, but his ambitions were defeated long before death finished them off, and so when he died, he came back to where he started, but he didn't come back home, because there was no home to come back to.

I know people who've had dreams unrealised due to circumstances.

I'd been trying to do this since I was 15, sending out the demo tapes and doing all the things that everyone told me that I should be doing. But no deal - like, never.

I got ideas above my station, and I made mistakes.

I didn't want to look back in 10 or 20 years and say, 'Yes, I always wanted to write that piano sonata or that novel, but I never had time.'

Academically, I was never that interested. I skipped classes. My biggest dream was to have a coffee shop, but I had no idea how to get the money to do that.

I think I laid it all out there for 19 years, and you don't always achieve all the goals that you shoot for.

I had always wanted to start a company, ever since I was very young.

I could have been a dancer. I just never got my shot at it.

I really love teaching; I was actually studying to be a preschool teacher.

I'll never be on the level of my idols.

My beloved father passed away just two months after I told him I was going to start a company. Whenever I make progress in my career, I wish I could share the news with my father.

Don't say I was an inspirational teacher - my former pupils would laugh their heads off. I was grossly incompetent, but I hope I didn't do the children a disservice.

The biggest problem I see with early-stage entrepreneurs is they get the idea in their head, and they leave it in their head. And they begin embellishing it in their head, making it more ornate. They add on the second story to their dream house - then add the tennis court and the turrets and the gargoyles.