Clare Bailey Mosley: What is the most important lesson life has taught you?

What is the most important lesson life has taught you?

Originally asked

The Guardian, to a different person each week, The Q&A

Verbatim recurring item in The Guardian Q&A; two fully readable publisher-hosted respondent pages establish institutional recurrence.

You answer as yourself. Nobody on FLAPSS answers as anybody else.

Recorded Clare Bailey Mosley said elsewhere, not written here

To be inquisitive.

The Q&A, The Guardian, 27 December 2025 source ↗

Others on this question

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Roger Ebert Film critic

I believe that if, at the end, according to our abilities, we have done something to make others a little happier, and something to make ourselves a little happier, that is about the best we can do. To make others less happy is a crime. To make ourselves unhappy is where all crime starts. We must try to contribute joy to the world. That is true no matter what our problems, our health, our circumstances. We must try. I didn’t always know this and am happy I lived long enough to find it out.

Recorded Salon, excerpted from Life Itself: A Memoir, 15 September 2011 source ↗

Meghann Fahy

Your lowest moment is temporary.

Recorded The Q&A, The Guardian, 25 April 2026 source ↗

Monica Dolan

To believe my eyes and not my ears.

Recorded The Q&A, The Guardian, 6 January 2024 source ↗

George H. W. Bush 41st President of the United States, 1989–1993

It's family, and it's faith, and it's friends. I would tell them that. Don't forget that. In your brilliance, don't turn your back on your friends. Don't think you're entitled to something because you're smarter than the next guy.

Recorded Academy of Achievement interview, Williamsburg, Virginia, 2 June 1995 source ↗