Insults are the arguments employed by those who are in the wrong.

Shallow understanding from people of good will is more frustrating than absolute misunderstanding from people of ill will.

I want to let you in on a little secret: I don’t always feel like I’m a success. That’s right. There are plenty of times when I feel like I’ve just totally messed up and failed to connect with the people I’m trying to communicate with.

Trust is the glue of life. It’s the most essential ingredient in effective communication. It’s the foundational principle that holds all relationships.

I don’t feel bitterness, I don’t feel anger towards anybody. Fighting is never emotional to me.

You never need an argument against the use of violence, you need an argument for it.

Sometimes one creates a dynamic impression by saying something, and sometimes one creates as significant an impression by remaining silent.

Consider, when you are enraged at any one, what you would probably think if he should die during the dispute.

The only defensible war is a war of defense.

Write in such a way as that you can be readily understood by both the young and the old, by men as well as women, even by children.

The best way to resolve any problem in the human world is for all sides to sit down and talk.

Words are more powerful than some noises. Noises won’t last long. Lyrics are so important, and people don’t realise that.

I soothe my conscience now with the thought that it is better for hard words to be on paper than that Mummy should carry them in her heart.

Never explain – your friends do not need it and your enemies will not believe you anyway.

I want the Israeli government to be made accountable for its behaviour to the Palestinians, and I want the people of the U.S. to cease acting as if they don’t understand what is going on.

Compassionate listening is to help the other side suffer less. If we realize that other people are the same people as we are, we are no longer angry at them.

I did my utmost to ensure that everyone below me in the chain of command felt comfortable approaching me with concerns, ideas, thoughts, and even disagreements.

Good writing is like a windowpane.

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

Well I have a microphone and you don’t so you will listen to every damn word I have to say!

Nobody’s ever said that pins are a tool of diplomacy.

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.

Fear not those who argue but those who dodge.

You can only have one aim per debate.

If you want to make peace with your enemy, you have to work with your enemy. Then he becomes your partner.

Tell the truth, but tell it slant.

I abhor war and view it as the greatest scourge of mankind.

When I woke up this morning my girlfriend asked me, ‚Did you sleep good?‘ I said ‚No, I made a few mistakes.‘

People often think I’m a faker, but I’m usually honest, in a certain way – in such a way that often nobody believes me!

I can unload my opinion on anybody at anytime.

No one knows who is listening, say nothing you would not wish put in the newspapers.

My friend has a baby. I’m recording all the noises he makes so later I can ask him what he meant.

No weapon has ever settled a moral problem. It can impose a solution but it cannot guarantee it to be a just one.

He who talks more is sooner exhausted.

I have known war as few men now living know it. It’s very destructiveness on both friend and foe has rendered it useless as a means of settling international disputes.

Humor is the first of the gifts to perish in a foreign tongue.

A man does not know what he is saying until he knows what he is not saying.

What I have never been afraid of is to be a little silly, and you can engage people that way. My view is, first you get them to laugh, then you get them to listen.

When we turn to one another for counsel we reduce the number of our enemies.

By and large, language is a tool for concealing the truth.

I like it when someone tells me ‚I don’t agree.‘ This is a true collaborator. When they say ‚Oh, how great, how great, how great,‘ that’s not useful.

Silence is the most perfect expression of scorn.

I can easily imagine Obama sitting down and talking to any leader – or any person – in the world, with no baggage of past servitude or race supremacy to mar their talks.

I have a scheme for stopping war. It’s this – no nation is allowed to enter a war till they have paid for the last one.

The wise ones fashioned speech with their thought, sifting it as grain is sifted through a sieve.

The pendulum of the mind alternates between sense and nonsense, not between right and wrong.

Kids are watching us. I experience it every single day. They hang on my every word, what I wear, what I say.

Clean fighting solves everything. It ends all bad blood and any ill feelings people have. That’s my thoughts.

The other night I ate at a real nice family restaurant. Every table had an argument going.

The mouth obeys poorly when the heart murmurs.

If you make listening and observation your occupation you will gain much more than you can by talk.

Writing and cookery are just two different means of communication.

When I’m nervous, I stutter, and I had to keep stopping and starting.

Don’t use words too big for the subject. Don’t say ‚infinitely‘ when you mean ‚very‘; otherwise you’ll have no word left when you want to talk about something really infinite.

I there represent that I sent notice of my method to Mr. Leibnitz before he sent notice of his method to me, and left him to make it appear that he had found his method before the date of my letter.

No one would talk much in society if they knew how often they misunderstood others.

If there is any one secret of success, it lies in the ability to get the other person’s point of view and see things from that person’s angle as well as from your own.

It is good to express a thing twice right at the outset and so to give it a right foot and also a left one. Truth can surely stand on one leg, but with two it will be able to walk and get around.

I was gratified to be able to answer promptly, and I did. I said I didn’t know.

Before I look stupid and not know what a word means or how to pronounce it, I’ll stop the whole production: ‚Hey, real quick, guys. Define this word for me. Somebody.‘

The finest language is mostly made up of simple unimposing words.