In the normal flow of a conversation, our attention is divided. We hear parts of what other people are saying, in order to follow and keep the conversation going. At the same time, we’re planning what we’ll say next, some exciting story of our own.

Our heritage and ideals, our code and standards – the things we live by and teach our children – are preserved or diminished by how freely we exchange ideas and 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.

I’m a people’s man – only the people matter.

The object is very clear in the fight against racism; you have reasons why you’re opposed to it. But when you’re writing a novel, you don’t want the reader to come out of it voting yes or no to some question. Life is more complicated than that.

To assert in any case that a man must be absolutely cut off from society because he is absolutely evil amounts to saying that society is absolutely good, and no-one in his right mind will believe this today.

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.

The best way to resolve any problem in the human world is for all sides to sit down and talk.

I never saw any of my dad’s stories. My mother said he had piles and piles of manuscripts.

Honest disagreement is often a good sign of progress.

So you cannot, as a Christian, walk away from Africa.

I’m not really good at fun-to-know, human interest stuff. We’re not ‚celebrities‘, whose life itself is a performance. Good or bad or ugly, we are our words. They’re what people meet.

People who know little are usually great talkers, while men who know much say little.

To a guy like me, a laugh is full of information.

I’m entirely interested in people, and also other creatures and beings, but especially in people, and I tend to read them by emotional field more than anything. So I have a special interest in what they’re thinking and who they are and who’s hiding behind those eyes and how did he get there, and what’s the story, really?

A good novel tells us the truth about its hero; but a bad novel tells us the truth about its author.

There is something in the way that we are now, with our cell phones, and people are not looking at each other and not being in the moment with each other, that kids feel isolated.

The influence of ‚Hidden Fortress‘ comes up a lot because it was printed in a book once. The truth is, the only thing I was inspired by was the fact that it’s told from the point of view of two peasants, who get mixed up with a samurai and princess and a lot of very high-level people.

I can honestly say, after talking about my mom passing away, I got the biggest weight off of my chest. Comedy is my therapy. That’s how I deal with my problems, my personal battles. I talk about it. I give it to my fans. When they laugh at it, it’s a release, for lack of a better word.

I learned from my dog long before I went to Gombe that we weren’t the only beings with personalities. What the chimps did was help me to persuade others.

People respond in accordance to how you relate to them. If you approach them on the basis of violence, that’s how they’ll react. But if you say, ‚We want peace, we want stability,‘ we can then do a lot of things that will contribute towards the progress of our society.

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

You have to listen very carefully and tell the truth if you are going to get a paranoid person to open up to you.

It’s a rather rude gesture, but at least it’s clear what you mean.

I’m the most recognized and loved man that ever lived cuz there weren’t no satellites when Jesus and Moses were around, so people far away in the villages didn’t know about them.

You hear about actors being late and all that sort of stuff, but you never find that with an actor who’s directed, because an actor who’s directed understands all the problems your production is going through.

I there represent that I sent notice of my method to Mr. Leibnitz before he sent notice of his method to me, and left him to make it appear that he had found his method before the date of my letter.

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.

I don’t like people going behind my back.

The most dangerous word in any human tongue is the word for brother. It’s inflammatory.

Nothing is so unbelievable that oratory cannot make it acceptable.

Social media is called social media for a reason. It lends itself to sharing rather than horn-tooting.

What makes you a SEAL, what makes you a SEAL is being a good tactician on the battle field, understanding how to shoot, move, and communicate, knowing small unit maneuver warfare. That’s what makes a good SEAL, and so that is the course of instruction that I taught, was getting SEAL platoons ready for deployments to Iraq and Afghanistan.

What you guys want, I’m for.

Even in literature and art, no man who bothers about originality will ever be original: whereas if you simply try to tell the truth (without caring twopence how often it has been told before) you will, nine times out of ten, become original without ever having noticed it.

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.

Talk well of the absent whenever you have the opportunity.

You might be the funniest guy in the world, but if you don’t have anything to talk about, people are eventually going to gravitate towards the guy that’s actually saying something.

One day, I’ll be listening to a bunch of Ray Charles, the next day it’s nothing but Red Hot Chili Peppers. The next day it might be Tupac all day.

The difference between the almost right word and the right word is really a large matter – ‚tis the difference between the lightning-bug and the lightning.

I have already demonstrated, by crucial tests, the practicability of signaling by my system from one to any other point of the globe, no matter how remote, and I shall soon convert the disbelievers.

It’s funny because I’ve made a living off of words, but words get in the way of what you really want to say.

The prospect of dating someone in her twenties becomes less appealing as you get older. At some point in your life, your tolerance level goes down and you realize that, with someone much younger, there’s nothing really to talk about.

Why a four-year-old child could understand this report. Run out and find me a four-year-old child. I can’t make head nor tail out of it.

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.

As soon as I arrived in the Indies, in the first island which I found, I took some of the natives by force, in order that they might learn and might give me information of whatever there is in these parts. And so it was that they soon understood us, and we them, either by speech or by signs, and they have been very serviceable.

People have been fed this diet of pabulum, rights, and impulsive freedom. There’s just an absolute starvation for the other side of the story.

The postman wants an autograph. The cab driver wants a picture. The waitress wants a handshake. Everyone wants a piece of you.

I vividly remember a conversation I had many years ago in 1974, which marked a turning point in my leadership journey. I was sitting at a Holiday Inn with my friend, Kurt Campmeyer, when he asked me if I had a personal growth plan. I didn’t. In fact, I didn’t even know you were supposed to have one.

You don’t tell deliberate lies, but sometimes you have to be evasive.

Of course it’s the same old story. Truth usually is the same old story.

Plot exposition that can be gently wound out by the authorial voice and internal monologue of a character in the length of a page has to be delivered in a matter of seconds on the stage.

One of the amazing things about ‚Seven Samurai‘ is that there are a lot of characters. And considering you have so many, and they all have shaved heads, and you’ve got good guys and bad guys and peasants, you get to understand a lot of them without too much being said.

There is but one way for a president to deal with Congress, and that is continuously, incessantly, and without interruption. If it is really going to work, the relationship has got to be almost incestuous.

Some animals utter a loud cry. Some are silent, and others have a voice, which in some cases may be expressed by a word; in others, it cannot. There are also noisy animals and silent animals, musical and unmusical kinds, but they are mostly noisy about the breeding season.

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

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

He who knows how to flatter also knows how to slander.

Sometimes one creates a dynamic impression by saying something, and sometimes one creates as significant an impression by remaining silent.

In comic strips, the person on the left always speaks first.

There are many times when a woman will ask another girl friend how she likes her new hat. She will reply, ‚Fine,‘ but slap her hand to her forehead the minute the girl leaves to yipe, ‚What a horror!‘