I’ve always regretted that I never was able to talk openly with my parents, especially with my father. I’ve heard and read so many things about my family that I can no longer believe anything; every relative I question has a completely different story from the last.

If every man loves his mother, he’s going to treat the ladies right, with love and respect.

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

Words are loaded pistols.

Never be so brief as to become obscure.

Words, words, mere words, no matter from the heart.

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

There is only one thing in life worse than being talked about, and that is not being talked about.

My readers – and I get 400 emails for a day, my readers normally they say, well, you understand me, and I answer, you do understand me also. We are in the same level.

You can’t trust very many people.

An inability to handle language is not the same thing as stupidity.

If you’re yelling you’re the one who’s lost control of the conversation.

I was gratified to be able to answer promptly, and I did. I said I didn’t know.

The capacity of human beings to bore one another seems to be vastly greater than that of any other animal.

I promised myself that I would write as well as I can, tell the truth, not to tell everything I know, but to make sure that everything I tell is true, as I understand it. And to use the eloquence which my language affords me.

Newspapers are the second hand of history. This hand, however, is usually not only of inferior metal to the other hands, it also seldom works properly.

The question isn’t, ‚What do we want to know about people?‘, It’s, ‚What do people want to tell about themselves?‘

A lie gets halfway around the world before the truth has a chance to get its pants on.

I write all of my own speeches.

A friend should be a master at guessing and keeping still: you must not want to see everything.

I wish I could shut up, but I can’t, and I won’t.

When I tell a child something the first time, I’m nice. The 15th time, I start to get aggravated.

The major advances in speed of communication and ability to interact took place more than a century ago. The shift from sailing ships to telegraph was far more radical than that from telephone to email!

To me, constructive criticism is when people take ownership of their ideas. That’s why I don’t listen to anything that’s anonymous. But it’s hard; when there’s something hurtful out there, I still want to read it over and over and memorize it and explain my point of view to the person.

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

Too often the strong, silent man is silent only because he does not know what to say, and is reputed strong only because he has remained silent.

Next to doing the right thing, the most important thing is to let people know you are doing the right thing.

The one thing I regret was that my work required an enormous amount of my time, and a lot of travel.

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

Being a child at home alone in the summer is a high-risk occupation. If you call your mother at work thirteen times an hour, she can hurt you.

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

The most successful politician is he who says what the people are thinking most often in the loudest voice.

We are symbols, and inhabit symbols.

I feel like I was writing as I was learning to talk. Writing was always a go-to form of communication. And I knew I could sing from being in tune with the radio.

I realized why directors are such horrible people – in a way – because you want things to be right, and people will just not listen to you, and there is no time to be nice to people, no time to be delicate.

The world would be happier if men had the same capacity to be silent that they have to speak.

Before I look stupid and not know what a word means or how to pronounce it, I’ll stop the whole production: ‚Hey, real quick, guys. Define this word for me. Somebody.‘

I’ll think I have a few wonderful friends and all of a sudden, ooh, here it comes. They do a lot of things. They talk about you to the press, to their friends, tell stories, and you know, it’s disappointing.

Here in the West, people often don’t like listening to their leaders, even if they are right.

I don’t want to just preach to the church. I feel like I have a broader message.

Not to expose your true feelings to an adult seems to be instinctive from the age of seven or eight onwards.

The wise ones fashioned speech with their thought, sifting it as grain is sifted through a sieve.

Why regret anything? Where does it get you to regret anything you’ve ever done in your life? It gets you nowhere. It’s a pathetic emotion that you can wallow in.

We shall never be able to remove suspicion and fear as potential causes of war until communication is permitted to flow, free and open, across international boundaries.

Everything becomes a little different as soon as it is spoken out loud.

People like to hear the word ‚love.‘

Nothing strengthens authority so much as silence.

No one knows who is listening, say nothing you would not wish put in the newspapers.

Thinking: the talking of the soul with itself.

There is a huge need and a huge opportunity to get everyone in the world connected, to give everyone a voice and to help transform society for the future. The scale of the technology and infrastructure that must be built is unprecedented, and we believe this is the most important problem we can focus on.

People who have given us their complete confidence believe that they have a right to ours. The inference is false, a gift confers no rights.

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.

Human language appears to be a unique phenomenon, without significant analogue in the animal world.

In my divorce, I stood up and said to my ex-wife, ‚Hey, I messed up. This had nothing to do with you. I didn’t understand what marriage was. I cheated. I was wrong. We couldn’t fix it; it got worse. I stepped away because I didn’t want it to get any worse. You’re the mother of my kids – I don’t want to hate you.‘

You hear doom and gloom about the Internet ruining young people’s command of English – that’s nonsense.

My – both my sisters died with pancreatic cancer. My brother died with pancreatic cancer. My daddy died of pancreatic cancer. My mother died with breast cancer.

Naturally, everybody has certain things they wish they hadn’t done in life. They wish they hadn’t kicked their dog when they were ten or something.

When a politician uses the word ‚folks,‘ we should brace ourselves for the deceit, or worse, that is coming.

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.

At best, the renewal of broken relations is a nervous matter.

Think twice before you speak, because your words and influence will plant the seed of either success or failure in the mind of another.