I have learned to interface – what I think would be the contemporary term – with various different lexicons, and people speak very different languages. I’ve learned to speak in a lot of tongues, and I can live with the bellicose language of some fervent, fire-breathing Christians, sure.

Won’t it be wonderful when black history and native American history and Jewish history and all of U.S. history is taught from one book. Just U.S. history.

Before I refuse to take your questions, I have an opening statement.

Language is an intrinsic part of who we are and what has, for good or evil, happened to us.

Extemporaneous speaking should be practiced and cultivated. It is the lawyer’s avenue to the public. However able and faithful he may be in other respects, people are slow to bring him business if he cannot make a speech.

Notice that the stiffest tree is most easily cracked, while the bamboo or willow survives by bending with the wind.

Nobody’s indispensable.

I’m not a person that socializes very well.

I think politicians really go with the tide.

Language is the dress of thought.

Some years ago I became president of Columbia University and learned within 24 hours to be ready to speak at the drop of a hat, and I learned something more, the trustees were expected to be ready to speak at the passing of the hat.

It is my ambition to say in ten sentences what others say in a whole book.

To expect the unexpected shows a thoroughly modern intellect.

I’m here. I’m not going anywhere. No matter what the injury – unless it’s completely debilitating – I’m going to be the same player I’ve always been. I’ll figure it out. I’ll make some tweaks, some changes, but I’m still coming.

Colorless green ideas sleep furiously.

If you only have a hammer, you tend to see every problem as a nail.

Why should I be studying for a future that soon may not exist?

I have my own vocabulary. I love linguistics. That surprises people.

What’s coming will come and we’ll just have to meet it when it does.

No matter what your mission is, have some notion in your head. Forget the model, whether it’s government or nonprofit or profit. Ask yourself the more important question: Is my mission improving the world? Are you sure about it? Seek to disconfirm that all the time. And if you can, change your mission.

Might, could, would – they are contemptible auxiliaries.

Take things as they are. Punch when you have to punch. Kick when you have to kick.

When things haven’t gone well for you, call in a secretary or a staff man and chew him out. You will sleep better and they will appreciate the attention.

There are some who speak well and write badly. For the place and the audience warm them, and draw from their minds more than they think of without that warmth.

Children are all foreigners.

Those people who develop the ability to continuously acquire new and better forms of knowledge that they can apply to their work and to their lives will be the movers and shakers in our society for the indefinite future.

Communication is a skill that you can learn. It’s like riding a bicycle or typing. If you’re willing to work at it, you can rapidly improve the quality of evry part of your life.

About the time we can make the ends meet, somebody moves the ends.

English is necessary as at present original works of science are in English. I believe that in two decades times original works of science will start coming out in our languages. Then we can move over like the Japanese.

You can always amend a big plan, but you can never expand a little one. I don’t believe in little plans. I believe in plans big enough to meet a situation which we can’t possibly foresee now.

Resist the need to be ‚right‘ all the time or to always have the last word.

When I was 5, some financial things happened, and I moved seven times in a year. We moved from apartment to apartment, sometimes living with friends. My mom would always say, ‚Don’t get comfortable, because we may not be here long.‘

Mind you, the Elizabethans had so many words for the female genitals that it is quite hard to speak a sentence of modern English without inadvertently mentioning at least three of them.

One must change one’s tactics every ten years if one wishes to maintain one’s superiority.

All fixed set patterns are incapable of adaptability or pliability. The truth is outside of all fixed patterns.

In making a speech one must study three points: first, the means of producing persuasion; second, the language; third the proper arrangement of the various parts of the speech.

I had one incident where my daughter said that a girl asked if she was a brown person. I said, ‚We’re black. You have black people, white people, Chinese people, Hispanic people; we’re all brought up differently.‘

‚Good English‘ is whatever educated people talk; so that what is good in one place or time would not be so in another.

Every now and then I will see a word as if for the first time, and suddenly appreciate that Evian is ‚naive‘ spelled backward, or that Bosnia is an anagram of ‚bonsai.‘

We become not a melting pot but a beautiful mosaic. Different people, different beliefs, different yearnings, different hopes, different dreams.

If one could only teach the English how to talk, and the Irish how to listen, society here would be quite civilized.

Times and conditions change so rapidly that we must keep our aim constantly focused on the future.

Whosoever desires constant success must change his conduct with the times.

Arrange whatever pieces come your way.

I have been – I have spoken in Bir Zeit a number of times.

What ‚multiculturalism‘ boils down to is that you can praise any culture in the world except Western culture – and you cannot blame any culture in the world except Western culture.

You can disagree without being disagreeable.

Things do not always happen the way I would like them to happen, and I had better get used to that.

I am most familiar with the Gujarati language.

What we need to do is always lean into the future; when the world changes around you and when it changes against you – what used to be a tail wind is now a head wind – you have to lean into that and figure out what to do because complaining isn’t a strategy.

I had noticed that many of these successful people, historical and contemporary, shared certain common traits. They had a way of thinking that was exceptionally fluid; they could adapt to almost any circumstance; when confronted with problems, they could look at them from novel perspectives and solve them.

A master performer like Bill Clinton never lost sight of the fact that as president he had to project confidence and power, but if he was speaking to a group of autoworkers he would adjust his accent and his words to fit the audience, and do the same for a group of executives.

If there’s one thing that’s certain in business, it’s uncertainty.

I don’t even know how to speak up for myself, because I don’t really have a father who would give me the confidence or advice.

Nothing is softer or more flexible than water, yet nothing can resist it.

I love diversity.

So when I speak in front of thousands, tens of thousands of people, I don’t really get nervous because I know what I want to say and I know what message I want to give.

Always fall in with what you’re asked to accept. Take what is given, and make it over your way. My aim in life has always been to hold my own with whatever’s going. Not against: with.

America is known as a country that welcomes people to its shores. All kinds of people. The image of the Statue of Liberty with Emma Lazarus‘ famous poem. She lifts her lamp and welcomes people to the golden shore, where they will not experience prejudice because of the color of their skin, the religious faith that they follow.

As our case is new, we must think and act anew.

Only the prepared speaker deserves to be confident.