I do love email. Wherever possible I try to communicate asynchronously. I’m really good at email.

Without tact you can learn nothing.

I’ve never managed to keep a journal longer than two weeks.

When it is obvious that the goals cannot be reached, don’t adjust the goals, adjust the action steps.

I sent one e-mail in my life. I sent it to Jeff Raikes at Microsoft, and it ended up in court in Minneapolis, so I am one for one.

By and large, language is a tool for concealing the truth.

When one has a great deal to put into it a day has a hundred pockets.

There is always another way to say the same thing that doesn’t look at all like the way you said it before. I don’t know what the reason for this is. I think it is somehow a representation of the simplicity of nature.

When we turn to one another for counsel we reduce the number of our enemies.

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.

It’s tough to negotiate from a position of weakness.

I want to let you in on a little secret: I don’t always feel like I’m a success. That’s right. There are plenty of times when I feel like I’ve just totally messed up and failed to connect with the people I’m trying to communicate with.

If you pour your life into songs, you want them to be heard. It’s a desire to communicate. A deep desire to communicate inspires songwriting.

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

Better three hours too soon than a minute too late.

It is in this power of saying everything, and yet saying nothing too plainly, that the perfection of art consists.

Most of the time, songs that I write end up being finished in 30 minutes or less.

Action expresses priorities.

But behavior in the human being is sometimes a defense, a way of concealing motives and thoughts, as language can be a way of hiding your thoughts and preventing communication.

Silence is safer than speech.

Always make those above you feel comfortably superior. In your desire to please or impress them, do not go too far in displaying your talents or you might accomplish the opposite – inspire fear and insecurity.

An inability to handle language is not the same thing as stupidity.

Where there is shouting, there is no true knowledge.

Communications technology changes possibilities for communication, but that doesn’t mean it changes the inherited structure of the brain. So you may think that you’re addicted to online reading, but as soon as it isn’t available anymore, your brain will pretty immediately adjust to other forms of reading. It’s a habit like all habits.

If you want to be more productive, then start at the start: get there on time. Whether it is a meeting, a flight, an appointment or a date, it’s important to ensure you are there when you say you will be there. This may feel like an old-fashioned tip to give, but it has served me well for five decades in business.

Take time for all things: great haste makes great waste.

People who enjoy meetings should not be in charge of anything.

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

The only way I hear gossip is if it’s big enough and loud enough for my friends to bring it up to me. Or if it’s, like, a big untrue ordeal from my publicist – and she hates making that phone call!

People are generally amazed that I would take an interest in any forum that would require me to stop talking for three hours.

When I am getting ready to reason with a man, I spend one-third of my time thinking about myself and what I am going to say and two-thirds about him and what he is going to 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.

Almost everybody will listen to you when you tell your own story.

The wise ones fashioned speech with their thought, sifting it as grain is sifted through a sieve.

Luckily for me, people don’t scream at me that much in my everyday life.

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.

Silence is argument carried out by other means.

Persuasion is clearly a sort of demonstration, since we are most fully persuaded when we consider a thing to have been demonstrated.

Listen to many, speak to a few.

I write all my sermons.

No one can lie, no one can hide anything, when he looks directly into someone’s eyes.

When you have a conflict, that means that there are truths that have to be addressed on each side of the conflict. And when you have a conflict, then it’s an educational process to try to resolve the conflict. And to resolve that, you have to get people on both sides of the conflict involved so that they can dialogue.

A fortunate author can write maybe twelve novels in his lifetime.

Never ask anyone over 70 how they feel. They’ll tell you.

What women need to understand is that men don’t communicate. It’s not intentional or on purpose. We’re just not as emotional. You ladies feel like you have to express yourselves.

Such a chimerical idea as telegraphing vocal sounds would indeed, to most minds, seem scarcely feasible enough to spend time in working over. I believe, however, that it is feasible and that I have got the cue to the solution of the problem.

Girls talk to each other like men talk to each other. But girls have an eye for detail.

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

A lie gets halfway around the world before the truth has a chance to get its pants on.

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

We cannot learn from one another until we stop shouting at one another – until we speak quietly enough so that our words can be heard as well as our voices.

I think we basically saw that the messaging space is bigger than we’d initially realized, and that the use cases that WhatsApp and Messenger have are more different than we had thought originally.

Debates, I hate.

There is a huge need and a huge opportunity to get everyone in the world connected, to give everyone a voice and to help transform society for the future. The scale of the technology and infrastructure that must be built is unprecedented, and we believe this is the most important problem we can focus on.

It usually helps me write by reading – somehow the reading gear in your head turns the writing gear.

Gentleness doesn’t get work done unless you happen to be a hen laying eggs.

A lot of people are focused on taking over the world or doing the biggest thing and getting the most users. I think part of making a difference and doing something cool is focusing intensely.

When asked, ‚How do you write?‘ I invariably answer, ‚one word at a time.‘

I don’t go to bed at 1 A.M. and wake up at 5 A.M. and say, ‚Let’s see if I can get this done today.‘

Using e-mail, I can communicate with scientists all over the world.

He who waits to do a great deal of good at once will never do anything.