Forgive me my nonsense, as I also forgive the nonsense of those that think they talk sense.

One merit of poetry few persons will deny: it says more and in fewer words than prose.

I suppose for a very long time I’ve been trying to understand how it is that people might make sense out of their lives and make meaning and make their lives meaningful in the face of the trouble that life brings.

Better to be occasionally cheated than perpetually suspicious.

When we’re looking for compassion, we need someone who is deeply rooted, is able to bend and, most of all, embraces us for our strengths and struggles.

You know that your happiness and suffering depend on the happiness and suffering of others. That insight helps you not to do wrong things that will bring suffering to yourself and to other people.

Information is the oxygen of the modern age. It seeps through the walls topped by barbed wire, it wafts across the electrified borders.

I loved writing for kids, I loved talking to children about what I’d written, I don’t want to leave that behind.

I learned from my dog long before I went to Gombe that we weren’t the only beings with personalities. What the chimps did was help me to persuade others.

One who is injured ought not to return the injury, for on no account can it be right to do an injustice; and it is not right to return an injury, or to do evil to any man, however much we have suffered from him.

The best revenge is to be unlike him who performed the injury.

It’s considered acceptable in our culture to approach perfect strangers, as often or not who may be in extremis, and evangelise. I don’t see why that’s considered a normal thing.

If you’re yelling you’re the one who’s lost control of the conversation.

I come from a poor family, I have seen poverty. The poor need respect, and it begins with cleanliness.

I don’t like people going behind my back.

I will listen to anyone’s convictions, but pray keep your doubts to yourself.

I just really believe people have to get hungry. I think maybe what we need to do, instead of trying to stuff our beliefs down people’s throats, is just pray for them to really be hungry and to see their neediness.

I don’t have a problem with Hulk Hogan. People say things and do things, and who am I to judge?

My mother always taught us that if people don’t agree with you, the important thing is to listen to them. But if you’ve listened to them carefully and you still think that you’re right, then you must have the courage of your convictions.

When he speaks to you he speaks with an earnest vibe and an earnest energy.

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.

We should understand the source of our authority and something of the keys that control its power.

Our heritage and ideals, our code and standards – the things we live by and teach our children – are preserved or diminished by how freely we exchange ideas and feelings.

I don’t know what’s the matter with people: they don’t learn by understanding; they learn by some other way – by rote, or something. Their knowledge is so fragile!

Rational discussion is useful only when there is a significant base of shared assumptions.

If you ever go to a music session, you’ll notice that the musicians can sit down and start playing right away, and everyone knows what to do. Of course they’re reading it, but the conductor can tweak little things, and you can take that back to directing motion pictures.

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

But behavior in the human being is sometimes a defense, a way of concealing motives and thoughts, as language can be a way of hiding your thoughts and preventing communication.

The American public’s a lot more sophisticated than we all give them credit for. And on complicated issues, I’m going to give them straight answers. And if it takes more than three minutes, I’m going to do it.

I actually feel like women in my position, when we have all at our disposal to help us, shouldn’t complain when we consider all of the people who are really struggling and don’t have the means or support. Many people are single, raising children. That’s hard.

The essence of lying is in deception, not in words.

My faith helps me understand that circumstances don’t dictate my happiness, my inner peace.

Back, you know, a few generations ago, people didn’t have a way to share information and express their opinions efficiently to a lot of people. But now they do. Right now, with social networks and other tools on the Internet, all of these 500 million people have a way to say what they’re thinking and have their voice be heard.

An eye for an eye only leads to more blindness.

A man who was completely innocent, offered himself as a sacrifice for the good of others, including his enemies, and became the ransom of the world. It was a perfect act.

The wonderful news is that our Lord is a God of mercy, and He responds to repentance.

If I can stop one heart from breaking, I shall not live in vain.

There is danger that we lose sight of what our friend is absolutely, while considering what she is to us alone.

The history of science shows that theories are perishable. With every new truth that is revealed we get a better understanding of Nature and our conceptions and views are modified.

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.

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.

Can a mortal ask questions which God finds unanswerable? Quite easily, I should think. All nonsense questions are unanswerable.

A prisoner of war is a man who tries to kill you and fails, and then asks you not to kill him.

No matter what message you are about to deliver somewhere, whether it is holding out a hand of friendship, or making clear that you disapprove of something, is the fact that the person sitting across the table is a human being, so the goal is to always establish common ground.

It is always a strain when people are being killed. I don’t think anybody has held this job who hasn’t felt personally responsible for those being killed.

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

Stay humble and be concerned for the less fortunate.

I remember when I was younger, and in school, our teachers showed us films of plastic in the ocean, starving polar bears and so on. I cried through all the movies. My classmates were concerned when they watched the film, but when it stopped, they started thinking about other things. I couldn’t do that. Those pictures were stuck in my head.

If in prayer I come before a throne of grace, the faults of my prayer will be overlooked.

Good writing is like a windowpane.

Just as the humble, unassuming, assenting ‚O.K.‘ has deposed the more affirmative ‚Yes,‘ so the little cringe and hesitation and approximation of ‚like‘ are a help to young people who are struggling to negotiate the shoals and rapids of ethnic identity, the street, and general correctness.

You have to take risks. We will only understand the miracle of life fully when we allow the unexpected to happen.

I don’t do Shakespeare. I don’t talk in that kind of broken English.

But if thought corrupts language, language can also corrupt thought.

Reversing your treatment of the man you have wronged is better than asking his forgiveness.

Who you are speaks so loudly I can’t hear what you’re saying.

If you try and take a cat apart to see how it works, the first thing you have on your hands is a nonworking cat.

We shall never be able to remove suspicion and fear as potential causes of war until communication is permitted to flow, free and open, across international boundaries.

The subtlety of nature is greater many times over than the subtlety of the senses and understanding.

Well, the thing that I learned as a diplomat is that human relations ultimately make a huge difference.

I’ll never make it, it will never happen, because they’re never going to hear me ‚cause they’re screaming all the time.