A speech idiosyncrasy, in the same way as an air quote, is really justifiable only if it’s employed very sparingly and if the user consciously intends to be using it.

My own experience is use the tools that are out there. Use the digital world. But never lose sight of the need to reach out and talk to other people who don’t share your view. Listen to them and see if you can find a way to compromise.

An inability to handle language is not the same thing as stupidity.

Talk that does not end in any kind of action is better suppressed altogether.

If you want to get each individual’s honest opinion, you don’t want that opinion to be influenced by others who are present, much less allow a group to coordinate what they are going to say.

I actually started off majoring in computer science, but I knew right away I wasn’t going to stay with it. It was because I had this one professor who was the loneliest, saddest man I’ve ever known. He was a programmer, and I knew that I didn’t want to do whatever he did. So after that, I switched to Communications.

A lie gets halfway around the world before the truth has a chance to get its pants on.

Keep silence for the most part, and speak only when you must, and then briefly.

You can close more business in two months by becoming interested in other people than you can in two years by trying to get people interested in you.

An intellectual says a simple thing in a hard way. An artist says a hard thing in a simple way.

The more you explain it, the more I don’t understand it.

Words, words, words! They shut one off from the universe. Three quarters of the time one’s never in contact with things, only with the beastly words that stand for them.

As we must account for every idle word, so must we account for every idle silence.

Newspapers are the second hand of history. This hand, however, is usually not only of inferior metal to the other hands, it also seldom works properly.

The great enemy of clear language is insincerity. When there is a gap between one’s real and one’s declared aims, one turns, as it were, instinctively to long words and exhausted idioms, like a cuttlefish squirting out ink.

People are very reluctant to talk about their private lives but then you go to the internet and they’re much more open.

The duty of rhetoric is to deal with such matters as we deliberate upon without arts or systems to guide us, in the hearing of persons who cannot take in at a glance a complicated argument or follow a long chain of reasoning.

Parents and teachers, learn to listen, then listen to learn from children.

We have language and they do not. Chimps communicate by embracing, patting, looking – all these things. And they have lots of sounds. But they cannot sit and discuss. They cannot teach about things that are not present, as far as we know.

An intellectual is a man who takes more words than necessary to tell more than he knows.

I’m blessed to have such a tight-knit family that we can talk about anything. Whether we talk frequently or not, since we’re on separate ends of the country, there are a lot of moving parts, and we always stay tight and find that center ground that keeps us together.

He who speaks without modesty will find it difficult to make his words good.

The Internet has compromised the quality of debate.

I don’t know how to work a room. It’s a real skill.

When I tell a child something the first time, I’m nice. The 15th time, I start to get aggravated.

Great leaders are almost always great simplifiers, who can cut through argument, debate and doubt, to offer a solution everybody can understand.

Prayer is simply a two-way conversation between you and God.

In my neighborhood, when you’ve got something to say to a guy, you look him in the eye and you say it to him.

When I talk to kids, I’m really listening. When I do that, we have a little bit of a bigger connection than me being Kendrick Lamar and you being a student. It’s almost like we’re friends. Because a friend listens.

Such a chimerical idea as telegraphing vocal sounds would indeed, to most minds, seem scarcely feasible enough to spend time in working over. I believe, however, that it is feasible and that I have got the cue to the solution of the problem.

‚Good English‘ is whatever educated people talk; so that what is good in one place or time would not be so in another.

The happiest conversation is that of which nothing is distinctly remembered, but a general effect of pleasing impression.

The secret of being a bore… is to tell everything.

If you do not wish a man to do a thing, you had better get him to talk about it; for the more men talk, the more likely they are to do nothing else.

The mark of a true politician is that he is never at a loss for words because he is always half-expecting to be asked to make a speech.

Basketball is my passion, I love it. But my family and friends mean everything to me. That’s what’s important. I need my phone so I can keep in contact with them at all times.

Brevity is a great charm of eloquence.

Please don’t ask me to do that which I’ve just said I’m not going to do, because you’re burning up time. The meter is running through the sand on you, and I am now filibustering.

Coffee is a language in itself.

Woe to the makers of literal translations, who by rendering every word weaken the meaning! It is indeed by so doing that we can say the letter kills and the spirit gives life.

Ten people who speak make more noise than ten thousand who are silent.

The major advances in speed of communication and ability to interact took place more than a century ago. The shift from sailing ships to telegraph was far more radical than that from telephone to email!

Foreign policy is like human relations, only people know less about each other.

I try to speak in everyday language. I feel like God has gifted me to take Bible principles and make them practical.

Genius might be the ability to say a profound thing in a simple way.

A minute of thought is greater than an hour of talk.

Men govern nothing with more difficulty than their tongues, and can moderate their desires more than their words.

If you’re talking to a man who wouldn’t fight with you under any circumstances whatsoever, then you’re talking to someone for whom you have absolutely no respect.

Without words, without writing and without books there would be no history, there could be no concept of humanity.

In the normal flow of a conversation, our attention is divided. We hear parts of what other people are saying, in order to follow and keep the conversation going. At the same time, we’re planning what we’ll say next, some exciting story of our own.

But let there be spaces in your togetherness and let the winds of the heavens dance between you. Love one another but make not a bond of love: let it rather be a moving sea between the shores of your souls.

In my divorce, I stood up and said to my ex-wife, ‚Hey, I messed up. This had nothing to do with you. I didn’t understand what marriage was. I cheated. I was wrong. We couldn’t fix it; it got worse. I stepped away because I didn’t want it to get any worse. You’re the mother of my kids – I don’t want to hate you.‘

Use what language you will, you can never say anything but what you are.

Of course you can’t ‚trust‘ what people tell you on the web anymore than you can ‚trust‘ what people tell you on megaphones, postcards or in restaurants. Working out the social politics of who you can trust and why is, quite literally, what a very large part of our brain has evolved to do.

At Facebook, we build tools to help people connect with the people they want and share what they want, and by doing this we are extending people’s capacity to build and maintain relationships.

Sometimes it’s a form of love just to talk to somebody that you have nothing in common with and still be fascinated by their presence.

Talking isn’t doing. It is a kind of good deed to say well; and yet words are not deeds.

Remind yourself that winning an argument or proving your point really gets you nowhere in the long run. Win through your actions, not your words.

What women need to understand is that men don’t communicate. It’s not intentional or on purpose. We’re just not as emotional. You ladies feel like you have to express yourselves.

It’s a very good question, very direct, and I’m not going to answer it.

I speak a number of languages, but none are more beautiful to me than English.