I didn’t just invent saying offensive things.

Some animals are cunning and evil-disposed, as the fox; others, as the dog, are fierce, friendly, and fawning. Some are gentle and easily tamed, as the elephant; some are susceptible of shame, and watchful, as the goose. Some are jealous and fond of ornament, as the peacock.

I don’t need therapy. I’m not going to see a therapist; comedy acts as my therapy. I put my problems out there. I talk about them. I talk about everything before anybody has a chance.

I’m grateful for the opportunities God gave me to minister to people in high places; people in power have spiritual and personal needs like everyone else, and often they have no one to talk to.

I am a good listener. I think that came from my schooling.

When new turns of behavior cease to appear in the life of the individual, its behavior ceases to be intelligent.

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.

Listening has importance only when one is not projecting one’s own desires through which one listens.

Lying is not only saying what isn’t true. It is also, in fact especially, saying more than is true and, in the case of the human heart, saying more than one feels. We all do it, every day, to make life simpler.

The difficulty with this conversation is that it’s very different from most of the ones I’ve had of late. Which, as I explained, have mostly been with trees.

The issues a president faces are not black and white, and cannot be boiled down into 140 characters. Because when you have the nuclear codes at your fingertips and the military at your command, you can’t make snap decisions. You can’t have a thin skin or the tendency to lash out.

If your man is a sports enthusiast, you may have to resign yourself to his spouting off in a monotone on a prize fight, football game or pennant race.

I would rather try to persuade a man to go along, because once I have persuaded him, he will stick. If I scare him, he will stay just as long as he is scared, and then he is gone.

I do think that we’re gonna move towards this world where eventually you’ll be able to capture a whole experience that you’re in and be able to send that to someone.

I act on impulse and I go with my instincts.

An idea, like a ghost, must be spoken to a little before it will explain itself.

Imagination is not only the uniquely human capacity to envision that which is not, and therefore the fount of all invention and innovation. In its arguably most transformative and revelatory capacity, it is the power to that enables us to empathize with humans whose experiences we have never shared.

The great enemy of clear language is insincerity. When there is a gap between one’s real and one’s declared aims, one turns, as it were, instinctively to long words and exhausted idioms, like a cuttlefish squirting out ink.

Language is the dress of thought.

I’m actually a very honest person, and sometimes I end up like, ‚Man, I said too much.‘ It’s hard for me not to tell the truth when you ask me.

If you deny people their own voice, you’ll have no idea of who they were.

Character may almost be called the most effective means of persuasion.

If I’m in a political argument, I think I can, with reasonable accuracy and without boasting, put the other person’s side of the case at least as well as they could. One has to be able to say that in any well-conducted argument.

Talk that does not end in any kind of action is better suppressed altogether.

The moral disapprobation of society has an impact on behavior in societies.

I don’t like typing messages on my phone. Some people get used to it.

Brevity and conciseness are the parents of correction.

I can unload my opinion on anybody at anytime.

The happiest conversation is that of which nothing is distinctly remembered, but a general effect of pleasing impression.

It is very hard to not be able to engage with people in a real and honest way because they either want something from me, or they see me as something that I simply am not.

Telling us to obey instinct is like telling us to obey ‚people.‘ People say different things: so do instincts. Our instincts are at war… Each instinct, if you listen to it, will claim to be gratified at the expense of the rest.

Brevity is a great charm of eloquence.

And all who told it added something new, and all who heard it, made enlargements too.

I have owed you this letter for a very long time-but my fingers have avoided the pencil as though it were an old and poisoned tool.

We think when God speaks to us, there’s going to be a boom out of Heaven or we’re going to get some chill bumps, but I really believe God’s talking to us all the time. He’s talking to us right in here. I call it our heart, our conscience, but it’s the Holy Spirit talking to us.

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.

The vulgar man is always the most distinguished, for the very desire to be distinguished is vulgar.

Let us make a special effort to stop communicating with each other, so we can have some conversation.

First and foremost, we need to be the adults we want our children to be. We should watch our own gossiping and anger. We should model the kindness we want to see.

Words, words, mere words, no matter from the heart.

Stage actors are usually much more conscious of speaking up and making sure that everyone can hear in the back of the theatre; a film actor probably thinks of that a little less.

When a thoughtless or unkind word is spoken, best tune out.

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.

Rigid, the skeleton of habit alone upholds the human frame.

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.

The people to fear are not those who disagree with you, but those who disagree with you and are too cowardly to let you know.

You know, you can make a small mistake in language or etiquette in Britain, or you could when I was younger, and really be made to feel it, and it’s the flick of a lash, but it would sting, and especially at school where there’s not much privacy, and so on. You could, yes, undoubtedly be made to feel crushed.

I was also a junior and I know how you learn from seniors, that’s how you follow. Speeches don’t work.

If you want a love message to be heard, it has got to be sent out. To keep a lamp burning, we have to keep putting oil in it.

I’m mischievous, but I’m calculated.

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.

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

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.

Kids are watching us. I experience it every single day. They hang on my every word, what I wear, what I say.

In this experiment, made on the 9th of October, 1876, actual conversation, backwards and forwards, upon the same line, and by the same instruments reciprocally used, was successfully carried on for the first time upon a real line of miles in length.

We build too many walls and not enough bridges.

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

One must be an inventor to read well. There is then creative reading as well as creative writing.

But let there be spaces in your togetherness and let the winds of the heavens dance between you. Love one another but make not a bond of love: let it rather be a moving sea between the shores of your souls.

I wash my hands of those who imagine chattering to be knowledge, silence to be ignorance, and affection to be art.

When he to whom one speaks does not understand, and he who speaks himself does not understand, that is metaphysics.