You know, you only get to live life once, so there are two things that that yields. One is that there's no point in crying over spilt milk, but secondly you hate wasting time, energy, and whatever talent you've got.
The framework I found which made the decision incredibly easy was what I called — which only a nerd would call — a “regret minimization framework.” So, I wanted to project myself forward to age 80 and say, “Okay, now I’m looking back on my life. I want to have minimized the number of regrets I have.”
Here is a sovereign talisman against regret: never do that which might engender it.
Nothing I have ever done has made my future worse, my parents' life worse, my daughter's life worse.
If you were starting over today, what would you do differently? Whatever your answer, start doing it now.
If I had my life to live over again, I would ask that not a thing be changed, but that my eyes be opened wider.
Every life has a destiny... the trick is to discover it before then end of your life. Otherwise, you will have too many regrets.
My goal in life is to make decisions that minimize regrets. I don't regret anything I've done.
I think if I had to do it over again, I'd do it the same way. I would just put more resources into getting the public diplomacy part much stronger than we were able to.
This has been a wonderful life, absolutely terrific. There are very few things that I would go back and do differently, if I had that control.
I never ponder counterfactuals.
Let us all so live as we shall wish we had lived when we come to die; for that only is well, that ends well.
I'm comfortable that I made the best decisions I possibly could.
Were the offer made true, I would engage to run again, from beginning to end, the same career of life. All I would ask should be the privilege of an author, to correct, in a second edition, certain errors of the first.
