It’s human nature to not say everything that’s on your mind at the time you think it. Because we fear saying something that people will laugh at, people will think is dumb. We’re afraid of being embarrassed.

Hatred is gained as much by good works as by evil.

The deepest principle in human nature is the craving to be appreciated.

Words do not express thoughts very well. They always become a little different immediately after they are expressed, a little distorted, a little foolish.

The kids never listen to you, especially the youngest ones.

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.

Words mean more than what is set down on paper. It takes the human voice to infuse them with deeper meaning.

In order that all men may be taught to speak the truth, it is necessary that all likewise should learn to hear it.

People often think I’m a faker, but I’m usually honest, in a certain way – in such a way that often nobody believes me!

In the grip of a neurological disorder, I am fast losing control of words even as my relationship with the world has been reduced to them.

I’m the most boring person to talk to.

A woman will doubt everything you say except it be compliments to herself.

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 can’t hear me, it’s because I’m in parentheses.

The greatest thing in family life is to take a hint when a hint is intended-and not to take a hint when a hint isn’t intended.

Trust is the glue of life. It’s the most essential ingredient in effective communication. It’s the foundational principle that holds all relationships.

Just as the humble, unassuming, assenting ‚O.K.‘ has deposed the more affirmative ‚Yes,‘ so the little cringe and hesitation and approximation of ‚like‘ are a help to young people who are struggling to negotiate the shoals and rapids of ethnic identity, the street, and general correctness.

I like learning more about people; I like to talk to people.

Talk well of the absent whenever you have the opportunity.

Foreign policy is like human relations, only people know less about each other.

I am not some goddess that dropped down from the sky to sing pop music; I am not some extra-incredible human person that needs to be told how wonderful they are all day and kissed.

Brevity is a great charm of eloquence.

Telling us to obey instinct is like telling us to obey ‚people.‘ People say different things: so do instincts. Our instincts are at war… Each instinct, if you listen to it, will claim to be gratified at the expense of the rest.

There seems to be some perverse human characteristic that likes to make easy things difficult.

Early on, when I was quite young and going from job to job, I was foolish enough to sometimes speak to my fellow workers: ‚Hey, the boss can come in here at any moment and lay all of us off, just like that, don’t you realize that?‘ They would just look at me. I was posing something that they didn’t want to enter their minds.

You don’t lead by hitting people over the head – that’s assault, not leadership.

No matter how dull, or how mean, or how wise a man is, he feels that happiness is his indisputable right.

I have always considered it as treason against the great republic of human nature, to make any man’s virtues the means of deceiving him.

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

In honorable dealing you should consider what you intended, not what you said or thought.

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.

If men were born free, they would, so long as they remained free, form no conception of good and evil.

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

The Internet has compromised the quality of debate.

I’m not comfortable being around too many people. I don’t like being out in public too much. I don’t like going to bars. I don’t like doing celebrity stuff. So most of the characters I play are people who don’t always feel comfortable beyond their small circle of friends.

All the evidence that we have indicates that it is reasonable to assume in practically every human being, and certainly in almost every newborn baby, that there is an active will toward health, an impulse towards growth, or towards the actualization.

Sometimes the hardest thing to do is to trust your team. It’s a lesson I’ve had to relearn quite a few times.

Language is a weapon of politicians, but language is a weapon in much of human affairs.

We’re all sinners. Everybody you meet all over the world is a sinner.

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

But let there be spaces in your togetherness and let the winds of the heavens dance between you. Love one another but make not a bond of love: let it rather be a moving sea between the shores of your souls.

We must distinguish between speaking to deceive and being silent to be reserved.

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

In whatever adulation you get, there’s truth and there’s not truth. And wherever they dog you, and they say it was horrible – there’s truth and there’s not truth. It’s human nature to like to read the adulation more.

Every generation always thinks it was better before, and I think people have been saying this for probably thousands of years.

The Congressional Budget Office has been embarrassed repeatedly by making projections based on the assumption that tax revenues and tax rates move in the same direction.

The PC has improved the world in just about every area you can think of. Amazing developments in communications, collaboration and efficiencies. New kinds of entertainment and social media. Access to information and the ability to give a voice people who would never have been heard.

I think that people just have this core desire to express who they are. And I think that’s always existed.

Be generous with kindly words, especially about those who are absent.

Tell the children the truth.

If you can’t answer a man’s arguments, all is not lost; you can still call him vile names.

A friend of mine tells that I talk in shorthand and then smudge it.

When I’m nervous, I stutter, and I had to keep stopping and starting.

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

Speeches that are measured by the hour will die with the hour.

I would rather try to persuade a man to go along, because once I have persuaded him, he will stick. If I scare him, he will stay just as long as he is scared, and then he is gone.

I haven’t gone out of my way to seek advice from people I don’t know.

Basketball is my passion, I love it. But my family and friends mean everything to me. That’s what’s important. I need my phone so I can keep in contact with them at all times.

I am an introvert; privately I am very shy, and I don’t speak unless I have to.

The great enemy of clear language is insincerity. When there is a gap between one’s real and one’s declared aims, one turns, as it were, instinctively to long words and exhausted idioms, like a cuttlefish squirting out ink.

We’ve fallen into a trap of ever-widening orbits of contact, and there is a total disregard for the present moment.