I don’t like to talk much with people who always agree with me. It is amusing to coquette with an echo for a little while, but one soon tires of it.

I love argument, I love debate. I don’t expect anyone just to sit there and agree with me, that’s not their job.

Whenever the speech is corrupted so is the mind.

Sincere words are not fine; fine words are not sincere.

Part of what confuses people in times of upheaval is that you’re getting so many different points of view and directions and so and so, how to do this and do that. And a lot of it is written in a language that honestly most people cannot understand.

You make ‚em, I amuse ‚em.

Normally, when someone we love is turning away from a struggle, we self-protect by also turning away. That’s definitely my first response. I think change is more likely to happen if both partners have common language and a shared lens to see problems.

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

All our words from loose using have lost their edge.

We’re not trying to make you less of a man. We just want you to love us as deeply and as wholesomely and as fully as we love you.

It may be the part of a friend to rebuke a friend’s folly.

If you’re talking to a man who wouldn’t fight with you under any circumstances whatsoever, then you’re talking to someone for whom you have absolutely no respect.

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

It is good to express a thing twice right at the outset and so to give it a right foot and also a left one. Truth can surely stand on one leg, but with two it will be able to walk and get around.

When I look at public opinion, I’m not far out of the mainstream. I’m in it, in many respects. In some respects, public opinion goes beyond anything I’ve ever said.

If you want what you’re saying heard, then take your time and say it so that the listener will actually hear it. You might save somebody’s life. Your own, first.

A fundamentalist can’t bring himself or herself to negotiate with people who disagree with them because the negotiating process itself is an indication of implied equality.

My wife and I tried two or three times in the last 40 years to have breakfast together, but it was so disagreeable we had to stop.

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

A saint is tolerant and is attentive to the pleadings of other human beings, not only to spoken messages but to unspoken messages as well.

Any fact that needs to be disclosed should be put out now or as quickly as possible, because otherwise the bleeding will not end.

I think it’s fair to say that personal computers have become the most empowering tool we’ve ever created. They’re tools of communication, they’re tools of creativity, and they can be shaped by their user.

Prayer is simply a two-way conversation between you and God.

I just think you ought to talk straight with your people.

We have two ears and one mouth so that we can listen twice as much as we speak.

It’s pretty hard to be efficient without being obnoxious.

A leader who confines his role to his people’s experience dooms himself to stagnation; a leader who outstrips his people’s experience runs the risk of not being understood.

When you really don’t like a guy, they’re all over you, and as soon as you act like you like them, they’re no longer interested.

Brevity is a great charm of eloquence.

You don’t write because you want to say something, you write because you have something to say.

Suit the action to the word, the word to the action.

Those who cannot understand how to put their thoughts on ice should not enter into the heat of debate.

My first phone was two tin cans tied together with string, and it worked pretty good.

Discretion of speech is more than eloquence, and to speak agreeably to him with whom we deal is more than to speak in good words, or in good order.

We live in an image society. Speeches are not what anybody cares about; what they care about is the picture.

Silence is argument carried out by other means.

Hell is other people.

We live in a day that nobody’s lived in before: where you can touch more people. The message I’ll speak tonight and the message that I speak at home, people in India will hear. It’s just an amazing day.

Every day I try to be in communication with the universe in an unconscious way.

The only time people dislike gossip is when you gossip about them.

If you want peace, you don’t talk to your friends. You talk to your enemies.

The trouble with her is that she lacks the power of conversation but not the power of speech.

Sometimes I’ve been to a party where no one spoke to me for a whole evening. The men, frightened by their wives or sweeties, would give me a wide berth. And the ladies would gang up in a corner to discuss my dangerous character.

The other night I ate at a real nice family restaurant. Every table had an argument going.

Sometimes it’s a form of love just to talk to somebody that you have nothing in common with and still be fascinated by their presence.

Well I have a microphone and you don’t so you will listen to every damn word I have to say!

We awaken in others the same attitude of mind we hold toward them.

Before I lost my voice, it was slurred, so only those close to me could understand, but with the computer voice, I found I could give popular lectures. I enjoy communicating science. It is important that the public understands basic science, if they are not to leave vital decisions to others.

Talk well of the absent whenever you have the opportunity.

I very rarely think in words at all. A thought comes, and I may try to express it in words afterwards.

If the tongue had not been framed for articulation, man would still be a beast in the forest.

Anybody can be specific and obvious. That’s always been the easy way. It’s not that it’s so difficult to be unspecific and less obvious; it’s just that there’s nothing, absolutely nothing, to be specific and obvious about.

When we launched a new company, I reviewed the ads and marketing materials and asked those presenting the campaign to read everything aloud to test the phrasing and concept. If I could grasp it quickly, then it passed with muster. We would get our message across only if it was understandable at first glance.

Campaign behavior for wives: Always be on time. Do as little talking as humanly possible. Lean back in the parade car so everybody can see the president.

A yawn is a silent shout.

I have made this letter longer than usual, only because I have not had the time to make it shorter.

Time was when they that feared the Lord spake often to one another; I am afraid that now they more often speak one against another.

I boldly assert, in fact I think I know, that a lot of friendships and connections absolutely depend upon a sort of shared language, or slang. Not necessarily designed to exclude others, this can establish a certain comity and, even after a long absence, re-establish it in a second.

A man is more frank and sincere with his emotions than a woman. We girls, I’m afraid, have a tendency to hide our feelings.

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.

In the end, people are persuaded not by what we say, but by what they understand.