Diplomacy is listening to what the other guy needs. Preserving your own position, but listening to the other guy. You have to develop relationships with other people so when the tough times come, you can work together.

I had a great time being a salesman because of the pitches that I gave when I was selling shoes. However, I don’t think I’m as well versed in shoes as I am in comedy. Being a salesman was all about being a people person, and I enjoy being around people. I also love talking to people – which is why I think I did so well.

I have a producing partner named Stephen Hamel, and we’ve been trying to generate material.

I feel like I was writing as I was learning to talk. Writing was always a go-to form of communication. And I knew I could sing from being in tune with the radio.

Honest disagreement is often a good sign of progress.

Debates, I hate.

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

The Internet is becoming the town square for the global village of tomorrow.

Conflict cannot survive without your participation.

Without tact you can learn nothing.

The first time you say something, it’s heard. The second time, it’s recognized, and the third time it’s learned.

I write all my sermons.

Counsel with your parents is a privilege at any age.

I always tell people that you should only hire people to be on your team if you would work for them.

I spend a lot of time just, you know, with my girlfriend and my dog. And I mean, we don’t have a lot of furniture in our house, so it’s really simple. And we’re trying to build products for everyone in the world, right. And you don’t want to get isolated to do that.

Saying nothing… sometimes says the most.

The best way to give advice to your children is to find out what they want and then advise them to do it.

Our most tragic error may have been our inability to establish a rapport and a confidence with the press and television with the communication media. I don’t think the press has understood me.

We can’t afford to be killing one another.

I can unload my opinion on anybody at anytime.

I’m not really good at fun-to-know, human interest stuff. We’re not ‚celebrities‘, whose life itself is a performance. Good or bad or ugly, we are our words. They’re what people meet.

It is not, of course, complete yet – but some sentences were understood this afternoon… I feel that I have at last struck the solution of a great problem – and the day is coming when telegraph wires will be laid onto houses just like water or gas – and friends converse with each other without leaving home.

I’ve always wanted male friends that I could be real intimate with and talk about important things with and be as affectionate with that person as I would be with a girl.

I owe my success to having listened respectfully to the very best advice, and then going away and doing the exact opposite.

To jaw-jaw is always better than to war-war.

A friendship founded on business is better than a business founded on friendship.

Writers have to put up with this editor thing; it is ageless and eternal and wrong.

I remember the last three days that I was president, I never went to bed at all. I never went to bed until we had negotiated the final release of the hostages.

You beat him verbally. You beat him mentally, and then finally, you beat him physically. That’s the three ways to beat a man.

Give every man thy ear, but few thy voice.

Hackathons are these things where just all of the Facebook engineers get together and stay up all night building things. And, I mean, usually at these hackathons, I code too, just alongside everyone.

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.

No foreign policy – no matter how ingenious – has any chance of success if it is born in the minds of a few and carried in the hearts of none.

Words can be said in bitterness and anger, and often there seems to be an element of truth in the nastiness. And words don’t go away, they just echo around.

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.

There, in the chords and melodies, is everything I want to say. The words just jolly it along. It’s always been my way of expressing what, for me, is inexpressible by any other means.

It used to be the case, like you’d switch jobs, and then maybe you wouldn’t keep in touch with all the people that you knew from that old job, just because it was too hard. But one of the things that Facebook does is it makes it really easy to just stay in touch with all these people.

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

War is the continuation of politics by other means.

When I was young, an eccentric uncle decided to teach me how to lie. Not, he explained, because he wanted me to lie, but because he thought I should know how it’s done so I would recognise when I was being lied to.

War is not an exercise of the will directed at an inanimate matter.

Sports are such a great teacher. I think of everything they’ve taught me: camaraderie, humility, how to resolve differences.

Just talk to me as a father – not what the Constitution says. What do you feel?

When marrying, ask yourself this question: Do you believe that you will be able to converse well with this person into your old age? Everything else in marriage is transitory.

To be prepared for war is one of the most effective means of preserving peace.

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

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.

Because I know about the Holy Land, I’ve taught lessons about the Holy Land all my life, and – but you can’t bring peace to Israel without giving the Palestinian also peace. And Lebanon and Jordan and Syria as well.

Whenever you’re in conflict with someone, there is one factor that can make the difference between damaging your relationship and deepening it. That factor is attitude.

An intellectual says a simple thing in a hard way. An artist says a hard thing in a simple way.

Tell the audience what you’re going to say, say it; then tell them what you’ve said.

You can close more business in two months by becoming interested in other people than you can in two years by trying to get people interested in you.

Talking is a hydrant in the yard and writing is a faucet upstairs in the house. Opening the first takes the pressure off the second.

Neither sex, without some fertilization of the complimentary characters of the other, is capable of the highest reaches of human endeavor.

Only the guy who isn’t rowing has time to rock the boat.

After one has been in prison, it is the small things that one appreciates: being able to take a walk whenever one wants, going into a shop and buying a newspaper, speaking or choosing to remain silent. The simple act of being able to control one’s person.

I don’t want to just preach to the church. I feel like I have a broader message.

War should be the politics of last resort. And when we go to war, we should have a purpose that our people understand and support.

Throughout my career, I fed off the fuel of people not being able to understand me.

When individual members of the team are highly disciplined, they can be trusted and, therefore, allowed to operate with very little oversight.

I meet people overseas that know five languages – that the only language I’m comfortable in is English.