Effective communication is 20% what you know and 80% how you feel about what you know.

To be loved is very demoralizing.

No man means all he says, and yet very few say all they mean, for words are slippery and thought is viscous.

‚Mean‘ is a song I wrote about somebody who wrote things that were so mean so many times that it would ruin my day. Then it would ruin the next day. And it would level me so many times, I just felt like I was being hit in the face every time this person would take to their computer.

Education is important because it prepares you for life.

I am not one who was born in the possession of knowledge; I am one who is fond of antiquity, and earnest in seeking it there.

How do you know what it’s like to be stupid if you’ve never been smart?

No one ever doubts that I mean what I say. The problem is I sometimes say all that I mean.

Short words are best and the old words when short are best of all.

I soothe my conscience now with the thought that it is better for hard words to be on paper than that Mummy should carry them in her heart.

Tears come from the heart and not from the brain.

Honest disagreement is often a good sign of progress.

I don’t have faith in young people any more. I don’t waste time trying to communicate with them.

You can tell more about a person by what he says about others than you can by what others say about him.

Being a child at home alone in the summer is a high-risk occupation. If you call your mother at work thirteen times an hour, she can hurt you.

All emotion is involuntary when genuine.

Everything is clearer when you’re in love.

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

I know that I am intelligent, because I know that I know nothing.

You will always have partial points of view, and you’ll always have the story behind the story that hasn’t come out yet. And any form of journalism you’re involved with is going to be up against a biased viewpoint and partial knowledge.

The things I want to know are in books; my best friend is the man who’ll get me a book I ain’t read.

The person who grieves suffers his passion to grow upon him; he indulges it, he loves it; but this never happens in the case of actual pain, which no man ever willingly endured for any considerable time.

Books constitute capital. A library book lasts as long as a house, for hundreds of years. It is not, then, an article of mere consumption but fairly of capital, and often in the case of professional men, setting out in life, it is their only capital.

I had to resign myself, many years ago, that I’m not too articulate when it comes to explaining how I feel about things. But my music does it for me, it really does.

Genius without education is like silver in the mine.

Love is not consolation. It is light.

Too much of what is called ‚education‘ is little more than an expensive isolation from reality.

One of my direct subordinates, one of my guys that worked for me, he would call me up or pull me aside with some major problem, some issue that was going on. And he’d say, ‚Boss, we’ve got this, and that, and the other thing.‘ And I’d look at him and I’d say, ‚Good.‘

The finest works of art are precious, among other reasons, because they make it possible for us to know, if only imperfectly and for a little while, what it actually feels like to think subtly and feel nobly.

Imagination is more important than knowledge.

If Jesus were here today, he wouldn’t be riding around on a donkey. He’d be taking a plane, he’d be using the media.

Football is a sad game.

I don’t claim to be knowledgeable about theology. Most of my knowledge comes out of my experience and the lessons in the Bible. Every Sunday I’m home I teach 45 minutes and we boiled them down to one page for the new book, ‚Through the Year with Jimmy Carter.‘

No man should escape our universities without knowing how little he knows.

The emotions in a song – the anger, aggression – have got to be legitimate.

The fact is that people are good, Give people affection and security, and they will give affection and be secure in their feelings and their behavior.

I looked the people of Louisiana in the eye and told them exactly what I thought in terms that normal people use.

The capacity of human beings to bore one another seems to be vastly greater than that of any other animal.

The most dangerous word in any human tongue is the word for brother. It’s inflammatory.

Love is the wisdom of the fool and the folly of the wise.

I believe when it comes to love, there’s something intangible about who we are attracted to, and I don’t think I have a pattern.

If you do not wish a man to do a thing, you had better get him to talk about it; for the more men talk, the more likely they are to do nothing else.

Great teachers emanate out of knowledge, passion and compassion.

I love playing ego and insecurity combined.

I realized why directors are such horrible people – in a way – because you want things to be right, and people will just not listen to you, and there is no time to be nice to people, no time to be delicate.

Our affections as well as our bodies are in perpetual flux.

Words do two major things: They provide food for the mind and create light for understanding and awareness.

To know what you know and what you do not know, that is true knowledge.

Seeing much, suffering much, and studying much, are the three pillars of learning.

The learned is happy, nature to explore; The fool is happy, that he knows no more.

The mind unlearns with difficulty what it has long learned.

Morning without you is a dwindled dawn.

A little learning is a dangerous thing; Drink deep, or taste not the Pierian spring.

Every single one of us has a few months here or there that feel like dark months.

Men are born ignorant, not stupid. They are made stupid by education.

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

At the touch of love everyone becomes a poet.

I’ll think I have a few wonderful friends and all of a sudden, ooh, here it comes. They do a lot of things. They talk about you to the press, to their friends, tell stories, and you know, it’s disappointing.

It’s a rather rude gesture, but at least it’s clear what you mean.

Silence is one of the great arts of conversation.

In human intercourse the tragedy begins, not when there is misunderstanding about words, but when silence is not understood.