Top 40 Paul Smith Quotes (2025 Update)

1. “When life closes a door, God opens a window.”

— Paul Smith

2. “You can find inspiration in everything. If you can’t, then you’re not looking properly.”

— Paul Smith

3. “Experience is the best teacher. A compelling story is a close second.”

— Paul Smith

4. “Many people look but they do not see.”

— Paul Smith

5. “Stop making sense. Logic is predictable. Think differently.”

— Paul Smith

6. “Christianity began in Palestine as an experience, it moved to Greece and became a philosophy, it moved to Italy and became an institution, it moved to Europe and became a culture, and it moved to America and became a business! We’ve left the experience long behind.”

— Paul Smith

7. “There’s always an important person who helps support your interests and encourages you.”

— Paul Smith

8. “What I adore is mixing the unexpected, things you don’t imagine should go together.”

— Paul Smith

9. “A vision is a picture of the future so compelling people want to go there with you.”

— Paul Smith

10. “When knowledge is scant or conflicting, folklore takes over.”

— Paul Smith

11. “People, even children, aren’t really afraid of change. They’re afraid of not being prepared for change.”

— Paul Smith

12. “Don’t dress for fashion, dress for yourself.”

— Paul Smith

13. “The pastors and ministry leaders came away energized to have voter registration drives at their churches and motivated to encourage their congregations to “vote their values.””

— Paul Smith

14. “We’ve got a nation of people who have one eye looking out for the next speed camera, another looking for a speed limit sign and another looking at the speedometer – which is a bit of a shame, when you only have two eyes.”

— Paul Smith

15. “I think there were some programs but in those days art programs were kind of basic. You would do drawing and simple collage type work. But at home I was beginning to get interested in doing my own thing as well. I’m not sure what inspired this, but I became very interested in decorating things.”

— Paul Smith

16. “Upon graduation, in the yearbook I was voted “Most likely to succeed.” which I know was credited to my artistic achievements.”

— Paul Smith

17. “It was only when I got to high school and was in the art program that my artistic talent was recognized. The art program was directed by a wonderful and a very important person in my life – Charlotte Ranger, who was referred to as Mrs. Ranger. She had been teaching in the school for many years.”

— Paul Smith

18. “In a social studies class I did a paper on the history of Attica, which ended up being a little book that I created.”

— Paul Smith

19. “I think it was interesting that when you’re in those formative years you respond to things that interest you and don’t always know where they lead. But they accumulate and add up to something that enriches your later life or leads you to some new experience.”

— Paul Smith

20. “I was always busy doing something, being an only child.”

— Paul Smith

21. “I was painting furniture, learning to stencil, and explore all kinds of traditional techniques of decoration. I learned from books that I picked up.”

— Paul Smith

22. “The environment itself was culturally a vacuum, in that there was simply nothing that would inspire me in the arts. But my parents were always very supportive of anything that I explored or wanted to do.”

— Paul Smith

23. “At home, the radio was a big source and the classic radio programs we would listen to like Amos and Andy and whatever other ones there were.”

— Paul Smith

24. “At school there were some programs in music. I did take piano lessons, and we had a piano at home. I got very interested in that.”

— Paul Smith

25. “I was always making things. I made model airplanes and did a number of hands-on activities. I liked creating in some form or another, not realizing what it was all about.”

— Paul Smith

26. “My parents never prevented me from doing anything, but they didn’t have the knowledge of the arts that Mrs. Ranger had.”

— Paul Smith

27. “Maybe that’s what I’ve based my career on: getting up earlier than everyone else so I get an extra couple of hours.”

— Paul Smith

28. “Going back to the elementary school days, I was always drawing. I entered a Victory poster competition and won the top award that recognized my artistic instincts.”

— Paul Smith

29. “I know that I was conscious of all the aspects of the war, having had cousins who were in the army, who would send me notes and memorabilia. I began to collect things that they would send me.”

— Paul Smith

30. “The true Guru and Govind are but only One, and all who exist are but rays of that Sun:.”

— Paul Smith

31. “I became a bit of a teacher’s pet, and it became known in the school by both faculty and students that I really excelled in the arts. So that recognition I credit for my growing interest in art that continued to evolve later on.”

— Paul Smith

32. “Even today, the bigger the city, the better. That’s why I live in New York.”

— Paul Smith

33. “The Japanese are hard to understand, but once you do the world is your oyster.”

— Paul Smith

34. “Fortunately, I had cousins who lived in Buffalo and would often go to visit them, which I loved to do because I liked Buffalo as it was a big city. Even today, the bigger the city, the better.”

— Paul Smith

35. “In thinking back, not having any experience in any other elementary school, there may have been an advantage of being with different age groups to benefit from what they were learning in a more advanced capacity. With a small group like that, there was a lot of one-to-one teaching.”

— Paul Smith

36. “Being born in ’31 was during the Depression and in my earlier youth World War II took place – so it was not the best of times, and yet I don’t recall ever having experiences that were a burden.”

— Paul Smith

37. “At one point I had dreams of being in the school band, but I didn’t play an instrument that qualified me, and that was a problem. I always had fantasies to be part of that, but I did take my piano lessons quite seriously.”

— Paul Smith

38. “I learned from books that I picked up. That was something that just came out of nowhere but continued to be an attraction. So there was a continuum of my interest in the arts and involvement in creating that was strong enough that it later blossomed into much more.”

— Paul Smith

39. “There was a certain amount of discipline, I think; my parents wanted to be sure that I was not just sitting around doing nothing.”

— Paul Smith

40. “I was engaged in all the required courses of math and geometry, but the area that I blossomed in was the art program.”

— Paul Smith

41. “There were neighbors that I played with and did all the things that children do. I did mow the lawn. I did help with various things that needed to be done to occupy my time.”

— Paul Smith

42. “Charles Burchfield was exceptional. As such an accomplished artist, he had limited previous association with academia and teaching.”

— Paul Smith

43. “I developed friends in the community that were in walking distance or a bicycle ride away, so that I socialized and did a lot of things that children do in their early years.”

— Paul Smith

44. “A story is the shortest distance between being a stranger and being a friend.”

— Paul Smith

45. “The Perfect Master placed bow in his hand and let fly his arrows at where I did stand, one arrow which with his Love he had fired wounded me ceaselessly: my heart pierced.”

— Paul Smith

46. “Twitter proved without a shadow of a doubt it is much more than a social network, but a user-defined infrastructure that can be harnessed to change lives and expectations, to share and enhance unique experiences and viewpoints. – Twitchhiker.”

— Paul Smith

47. “We generally don’t tell our personal stories at work because we work with strangers. They remain strangers because we don’t tell our personal stories. You have to break the cycle.”

— Paul Smith

48. “Before I was married I learned the difference between a cheap and expensive wine after I was married I learned to drink the cheap wine.”

— Paul Smith

49. “When I had found Grace with the True Guru to me he made a revelation unique and true, then poured out upon me the cloud of Love and my body was fully soaked from up above.”

— Paul Smith