Change happens by listening and then starting a dialogue with the people who are doing something you don’t believe is right.

I wanted to be a doctor that I might be able to work without having to talk because for years I had been giving myself out in words.

Mind your speech a little lest you should mar your fortunes.

Now we’re in the midst of not just advocating for change, not just calling for change – we’re doing the grinding, sometimes frustrating work of delivering change – inch by inch, day by day.

I’d like to do a completely off-the-wall collaboration. I would like one of my songs to be the hook to a rap song. That would be so much fun!

There are no problems we cannot solve together, and very few that we can solve by ourselves.

Through every victory and every setback, I’ve insisted that change is never easy and never quick; that we wouldn’t meet all of our challenges in one term, or one presidency, or even in one lifetime.

I’ve learned that we all change constantly. It’s rare to find that person who is growing with you in the same way at the same time, who encourages you to grow.

I think of a hero as someone who understands the degree of responsibility that comes with his freedom.

All partisan movements add to the fullness of our understanding of society as a whole. They never detract; or, in any case, one must not allow them to do so. Experience adds to experience.

Facebook are an amazing team, a brilliant team. It’s a technology that brings people together.

Poets utter great and wise things which they do not themselves understand.

One of the most beautiful qualities of true friendship is to understand and to be understood.

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

Chinese people themselves, they really want change.

I’ve been a lot more into Facebook and Twitter and Instagram, which was a bit complicated for me to understand the language of each social media, because they all talk in different ways. It’s a nice way for me to tell people I appreciate them, which I forget to do sometimes.

Debates, I hate.

The difference between a stranger sending you a message that you might be interested in at a very low volume level, no repetition, just sending it to very few people, and that being done as spam – those things get close enough that you want to be careful never to filter out something that’s legitimate.

Of course, like anybody I repeat myself endlessly, but I don’t know that I’m doing it, usually.

Science is increasingly answering questions that used to be the province of religion.

The most genius thing about the way I create is to create with other geniuses.

Even if it turns out that time travel is impossible, it is important that we understand why it is impossible.

I could imagine at a certain age, when I have no vocal cords left, that I would find a young man who could sing my parts for me. But I don’t see why I would stop.

If you would judge, understand.

You must understand the whole of life, not just one little part of it. That is why you must read, that is why you must look at the skies, that is why you must sing and dance, and write poems and suffer and understand, for all that is life.

I have my own vocabulary. I love linguistics. That surprises people.

People make suggestions on what to say all the time. I’ll give you an example; I don’t read what’s handed to me. People say, ‚Here, here’s your speech, or here’s an idea for a speech.‘ They’re changed. Trust me.

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.

It constitutes a superhuman effort to lead any people in times of crisis. Without them, the changes would be impossible.

You don’t have the same mentality as you did five years ago – even one year. People are always changing, and I believe that everyone deserves the space to change and for people to recognize their change.

Half the world is composed of people who have something to say and can’t, and the other half who have nothing to say and keep on saying it.

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.

Change is always tough. Even for those who see themselves as agents of change, the process of starting a new thing can cause times of disorientation, uncertainty and insecurity.

Anytime we step out boldly to make changes, we take a chance that we might fail. But the only way to get better is to try.

What convinces is conviction. Believe in the argument you’re advancing. If you don’t you’re as good as dead. The other person will sense that something isn’t there, and no chain of reasoning, no matter how logical or elegant or brilliant, will win your case for you.

Among us, who is above must be in service of the others. This doesn’t mean we have to wash each other’s feet every day, but we must help one another.

A lack of transparency results in distrust and a deep sense of insecurity.

Nothing can be more absurd than the practice that prevails in our country of men and women not following the same pursuits with all their strengths and with one mind, for thus, the state instead of being whole is reduced to half.

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.

When you have nothing important or interesting to say, don’t let anyone persuade you to say it.

One must change one’s tactics every ten years if one wishes to maintain one’s superiority.

If we can really understand the problem, the answer will come out of it, because the answer is not separate from the problem.

Here in the West, people often don’t like listening to their leaders, even if they are right.

Sometimes you recognize that there is a category of human experience that has not been identified but everyone knows about it. That is when I find a term to describe it.

One great use of words is to hide our thoughts.

Science is nothing but perception.

When I do listen to music, I’m more prone to listen to the people I’ve always listened to: George Jones, Otis Redding, Alison Krauss and Emmylou Harris.

The infinite faith I have in people’s ability to understand anything that makes sense has always been justified, finally, by their behavior.

The higher a man stands, the more the word vulgar becomes unintelligible to him.

We may have our private opinions but why should they be a bar to the meeting of hearts?

Now I am older, I understand we have to accept who we are.

We hunger to understand, so we invent myths about how we imagine the world is constructed – and they’re, of course, based upon what we know, which is ourselves and other animals. So we make up stories about how the world was hatched from a cosmic egg or created after the mating of cosmic deities or by some fiat of a powerful being.

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

When love and skill work together, expect a masterpiece.

To understand a name you must be acquainted with the particular of which it is a name.

When people talk, listen completely. Most people never listen.

Words are cheap. The biggest thing you can say is ‚elephant‘.

Whatever you cannot understand, you cannot possess.

I think the tiniest little thing can change the course of your day, which can change the course of your year, which can change who you are.

So let’s be honest with ourselves and not take ourselves too serious, and never condemn the other fellow for doing what we are doing every day, only in a different way.