I remember the first time I heard a teenager say ‚LOL.‘ Just what? But it means ‚laugh.‘ Why don’t you just laugh? What are you doing?

Questions are never indiscreet, answers sometimes are.

Talking isn’t doing. It is a kind of good deed to say well; and yet words are not deeds.

It’s not that I’m afraid to die. I just don’t want to be there when it happens.

Never find fault with the absent.

If you’re a politician, you might want to learn the Buddhist way of negotiation. Restoring communication and bringing back reconciliation is clear and concrete in Buddhism.

Everything human is pathetic. The secret source of humor itself is not joy but sorrow. There is no humor in heaven.

Genius might be the ability to say a profound thing in a simple way.

There was a time when people said, ‚Jim, if you keep on making faces, your face will freeze like that.‘ Now they just say, ‚Pay him!‘

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.

I laugh all the time – at things, people, stuff, whatever. But, I don’t laugh onstage because then it’s serious business.

I have no problem yelling at anybody’s kid – free of charge!

For an author to write as he speaks is just as reprehensible as the opposite fault, to speak as he writes; for this gives a pedantic effect to what he says, and at the same time makes him hardly intelligible.

Write in such a way as that you can be readily understood by both the young and the old, by men as well as women, even by children.

Rational discussion is useful only when there is a significant base of shared assumptions.

I’m a great believer that any tool that enhances communication has profound effects in terms of how people can learn from each other, and how they can achieve the kind of freedoms that they’re interested in.

I am odd-looking. I sometimes think I look like a funny Muppet.

You have to be careful about how much you reveal to people that look up to you so much.

The essence of lying is in deception, not in words.

Swearing is industry language. For as long as we’re alive it’s not going to change. You’ve got to be boisterous to get results.

I did my utmost to ensure that everyone below me in the chain of command felt comfortable approaching me with concerns, ideas, thoughts, and even disagreements.

If you can’t make it better, you can laugh at it.

If you’ve heard this story before, don’t stop me, because I’d like to hear it again.

Hell is full of musical amateurs.

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.

He that would live in peace and at ease must not speak all he knows or all he sees.

In the beginning the Universe was created. This has made a lot of people very angry and been widely regarded as a bad move.

If I have something to say, I want it to be meaningful.

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

The most terrifying words in the English language are: I’m from the government and I’m here to help.

A good laugh is sunshine in the house.

Be careful about reading health books. You may die of a misprint.

But, you know, it’s still a drag to get your picture taken when you’re eating a sandwich. It’s a downer.

If my doctor told me I had only six minutes to live, I wouldn’t brood. I’d type a little faster.

As the poet said, ‚Only God can make a tree,‘ probably because it’s so hard to figure out how to get the bark on.

Talk to a man about himself and he will listen for hours.

Songs for me are like a message in a bottle. You send them out to the world, and maybe the person who you feel that way about will hear about it someday.

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

How many legs does a dog have if you call his tail a leg? Four. Saying that a tail is a leg doesn’t make it a leg.

Perhaps, as some wit remarked, the best proof that there is Intelligent Life in Outer Space is the fact it hasn’t come here. Well, it can’t hide forever – one day we will overhear it.

People who do not know how to laugh are always pompous and self-conceited.

There is nothing more miserable in the world than to arrive in paradise and look like your passport photo.

He who speaks without modesty will find it difficult to make his words good.

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.

People like to hear the word ‚love.‘

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

It’s hard for me to grasp the concept of somebody being nervous when I’m talking to them.

We don’t get to know people when they come to us; we must go to them to find out what they are like.

I wake up every morning at nine and grab for the morning paper. Then I look at the obituary page. If my name is not on it, I get up.

Are you laboring under the impression that I read these memoranda of yours? I can’t even lift them.

Most of the stuff I do on the show comes out of me just trying to make my friends laugh.

I’m convinced of this: Good done anywhere is good done everywhere. For a change, start by speaking to people rather than walking by them like they’re stones that don’t matter. As long as you’re breathing, it’s never too late to do some good.

I’ve always appreciated a turn of phrase.

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

If one plays good music, people don’t listen and if one plays bad music people don’t talk.

I grew up in a funny way.

Never give an order that can’t be obeyed.

In order to have friends, you must first be one.

I have wondered at times what the Ten Commandments would have looked like if Moses had run them through the US Congress.

The poets have been mysteriously silent on the subject of cheese.

We are tired of aristocratic explanations in Harvard words.