Before a man speaks it is always safe to assume that he is a fool. After he speaks, it is seldom necessary to assume it.

What one fool can understand, another can.

There is, so I believe, in the essence of everything, something that we cannot call learning. There is, my friend, only a knowledge – that is everywhere.

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.

I want to negotiate what I’m worth. I want to put my analytics forward, man-to-man, and to be like, ‚This is what I’m owed now. Pay me.‘ And then we can talk.

The more you know the less you need to say.

‚Tis education forms the common mind; just as the twig is bent the tree’s inclined.

The writing is important, but the way you say the line and the pause you give it, the facial expression – all of that is very important.

Don’t ever call a guy first. The thing they want the most is whatever they can’t have. It sounds really juvenile, but it works.

I can resist everything except temptation.

France has more need of me than I have need of France.

Peace if possible, truth at all costs.

People see me on the street, and they point to me, and they’re like, ‚Hey! All right, all right, all right!‘

Who is the most sensible person? The one who finds what is to their own advantage in all that happens to them.

Judge a man by his questions rather than his answers.

No law or ordinance is mightier than understanding.

We know accurately only when we know little, with knowledge doubt increases.

Except during the nine months before he draws his first breath, no man manages his affairs as well as a tree does.

I think, a lot of times when you meet someone, you feel like you need to appear like you’re not interested in them so that they’ll be more interested in you. But what happens when you start showing him that you actually like him? What’s he gonna do then? Play the tape forward; how do you keep a guy like that? I don’t want to sign up for that.

Few things are harder to put up with than the annoyance of a good example.

One should take good care not to grow too wise for so great a pleasure of life as laughter.

If this is coffee, please bring me some tea; but if this is tea, please bring me some coffee.

Give every man thy ear, but few thy voice.

I don’t mind how much my Ministers talk, so long as they do what I say.

Who is the wisest man? He who neither knows or wishes for anything else than what happens.

I am not going to be a mouthpiece for language that I detest.

I write all my sermons.

Most people get a fair amount of fun out of their lives, but on balance life is suffering, and only the very young or the very foolish imagine otherwise.

Before I lost my voice, it was slurred, so only those close to me could understand, but with the computer voice, I found I could give popular lectures. I enjoy communicating science. It is important that the public understands basic science, if they are not to leave vital decisions to others.

The wise are wise only because they love. The fool are fools only because they think they can understand love.

I’m guarded; I don’t talk much.

We cannot always oblige; but we can always speak obligingly.

I don’t understand why or how we can bully each other.

It’s my old girl that advises. She has the head. But I never own to it before her. Discipline must be maintained.

Nothing strengthens authority so much as silence.

The sage does not hoard. The more he helps others, the more he benefits himself, The more he gives to others, the more he gets himself. The Way of Heaven does one good but never does one harm. The Way of the sage is to act but not to compete.

Life levels all men. Death reveals the eminent.

Do not be very upright in your dealings for you would see by going to the forest that straight trees are cut down while crooked ones are left standing.

We write for the same reason that we walk, talk, climb mountains or swim the oceans – because we can. We have some impulse within us that makes us want to explain ourselves to other human beings. That’s why we paint, that’s why we dare to love someone – because we have the impulse to explain who we are.

A bore is a person who opens his mouth and puts his feats in it.

We cannot wish for that we know not.

In South Korea, they believe that when you turn 60, you’ve become a baby again and the rest of your life should be totally about joy and happiness, and people should leave you alone, and I just think that that’s the height of intelligence.

But I’m pretty good with collaborative thinking. I work well with other people.

We don’t have to guess what Mitt Romney would have done if he were president. Because he told us. He said we should let foreclosures – and I quote – ‚hit the bottom‘ so the market could – I quote – ‚run its course.‘

You’ve got to work things out in the cloakroom, and when you’ve got them worked out, you can debate a little before you vote.

Every step of life shows much caution is required.

If some years were added to my life, I would give fifty to the study of the Yi, and then I might come to be without great faults.

The farther backward you can look, the farther forward you can see.

A loving heart is the truest wisdom.

Getting old is a fascination thing. The older you get, the older you want to get.

No one ever teaches well who wants to teach, or governs well who wants to govern.

Wisdom does not show itself so much in precept as in life – in firmness of mind and a mastery of appetite. It teaches us to do as well as to talk; and to make our words and actions all of a color.

It’s human nature to not say everything that’s on your mind at the time you think it. Because we fear saying something that people will laugh at, people will think is dumb. We’re afraid of being embarrassed.

Precepts or maxims are of great weight; and a few useful ones on hand do more to produce a happy life than the volumes we can’t find.

War is what happens when language fails.

You don’t lead by hitting people over the head – that’s assault, not leadership.

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!

For an author to write as he speaks is just as reprehensible as the opposite fault, to speak as he writes; for this gives a pedantic effect to what he says, and at the same time makes him hardly intelligible.

Questions are never indiscreet, answers sometimes are.

At twenty years of age the will reigns; at thirty, the wit; and at forty, the judgment.

He that composes himself is wiser than he that composes a book.