The problem with having a sense of humor is often that people you use it on aren’t in a very good mood.

Journalism largely consists of saying ‚Lord Jones is Dead‘ to people who never knew that Lord Jones was alive.

A man never tells you anything until you contradict him.

I haven’t gone out of my way to seek advice from people I don’t know.

We all want to help one another. Human beings are like that. We want to live by each other’s happiness, not by each other’s misery.

Verbosity leads to unclear, inarticulate things.

Only two things are necessary to keep one’s wife happy. One is to let her think she is having her own way, and the other is to let her have it.

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

I don’t like typing messages on my phone. Some people get used to it.

Understanding is a two-way street.

I never learn anything talking. I only learn things when I ask questions.

Above all, always be capable of feeling deeply any injustice committed against anyone, anywhere in the world. This is the most beautiful quality in a revolutionary.

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

Questions are never indiscreet, answers sometimes are.

Think occasionally of the suffering of which you spare yourself the sight.

We must, all of us, learn actually not to have enemies, but only confused adversaries who are ourselves in disguise.

I could talk all day, T stands for talking, T stands for tender, T stands for things that don’t even rhyme with T.

I do love email. Wherever possible I try to communicate asynchronously. I’m really good at email.

We awaken in others the same attitude of mind we hold toward them.

We have communion with Christ in His thoughts, views, and purposes; for His thoughts are our thoughts according to our capacity and sanctity. Believers take the same view of matters as Jesus does; that which pleases Him pleases them, and that which grieves His grieves them also.

I have a collective sense of suffering.

Whatever affects one directly, affects all indirectly. I can never be what I ought to be until you are what you ought to be. This is the interrelated structure of reality.

Every once in a while, you let a word or phrase out and you want to catch it and bring it back. You can’t do that. It’s gone, gone forever.

The poor don’t know that their function in life is to exercise our generosity.

It’s pretty hard to be efficient without being obnoxious.

I don’t have any oratory skills. But I would not use them if I had.

The real problem is not why some pious, humble, believing people suffer, but why some do not.

Those who don’t know how to weep with their whole heart, don’t know how to laugh either.

In the early days of the military Arpanet, my daughter was studying in Nicaragua. Because the U.S. was essentially at war with them, contact was difficult. I managed to use MIT’s Arpanet connection, and she found one, so we could communicate thanks to the Pentagon!

Let your heart feel for the afflictions and distress of everyone, and let your hand give in proportion to your purse.

There are many times when a woman will ask another girl friend how she likes her new hat. She will reply, ‚Fine,‘ but slap her hand to her forehead the minute the girl leaves to yipe, ‚What a horror!‘

I’m a great believer that any tool that enhances communication has profound effects in terms of how people can learn from each other, and how they can achieve the kind of freedoms that they’re interested in.

One man cannot hold another man down in the ditch without remaining down in the ditch with him.

You never make fun of anybody with a club foot or a withered arm, but it’s open season on anybody who stutters.

You pity the fool because you don’t want to beat up a fool! You know, pity is between sorry and mercy. See, if you pity him, you know, you won’t have to beat him up. So that’s why I say fools, you gotta give another chance because they don’t know no better. That’s why I pity them!

More helpful than all wisdom is one draught of simple human pity that will not forsake us.

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 don’t write letters anymore.

When we launched a new company, I reviewed the ads and marketing materials and asked those presenting the campaign to read everything aloud to test the phrasing and concept. If I could grasp it quickly, then it passed with muster. We would get our message across only if it was understandable at first glance.

Those who write clearly have readers, those who write obscurely have commentators.

Better understated than overstated. Let people be surprised that it was more than you promised and easier than you said.

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!

The healthy man does not torture others – generally it is the tortured who turn into torturers.

The true measure of a man is how he treats someone who can do him absolutely no good.

If you care about other people, you might try to organize to undermine power and authority. That’s not going to happen if you care only about yourself.

Real living is living for others.

The instruction we find in books is like fire. We fetch it from our neighbours, kindle it at home, communicate it to others, and it becomes the property of all.

I would be stupid not to be on my own side. But I’m a human being, too. And I’m on the side of human beings, rather than on the side of crocodiles.

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.

My daughter doesn’t even get my humor. She’s like, ‚Um, no. I don’t get it, Dad. Mmm, no, not that one, Dad.‘

I am a good listener. I think that came from my schooling.

Never find fault with the absent.

In the grip of a neurological disorder, I am fast losing control of words even as my relationship with the world has been reduced to them.

The overwhelming majority of Americans are possessed of two great qualities a sense of humor and a sense of proportion.

Think twice before you speak, because your words and influence will plant the seed of either success or failure in the mind of another.

A friend of mine tells that I talk in shorthand and then smudge it.

Among the letters my readers write me, there is a certain category which is continuously growing, and which I see as a symptom of the increasing intellectualization of the relationship between readers and literature.

Sitting on a bedroom floor crying is something that makes you feel really alone. If someone’s singing about that feeling, you feel bonded to that person.

If you do not understand a man you cannot crush him. And if you do understand him, very probably you will not.

I have always held firmly to the thought that each one of us can do a little to bring some portion of misery to an end.

Never be so brief as to become obscure.