My name can’t be that tough to pronounce!

I think a lot of people, including me, clammed up when a civilian asked about battle, about war. It was fashionable. One of the most impressive ways to tell your war story is to refuse to tell it, you know. Civilians would then have to imagine all kinds of deeds of derring-do.

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.

When I talked to him on the phone yesterday. I called him George rather than Mr. Vice President. But, in public, it’s Mr. Vice President, because that is who he is.

When our governments want to sell us a course of action, they do it by making sure it’s the only thing on the agenda, the only thing everyone’s talking about. And they pre-load the ensuing discussion with highly selected images, devious and prejudicial language, dubious linkages, weak or false ‚intelligence‘ and selected ‚leaks.‘

One must steer, not talk.

The language of friendship is not words but meanings.

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.

I grew up cursing a lot.

Keep silence for the most part, and speak only when you must, and then briefly.

I try to speak in everyday language. I feel like God has gifted me to take Bible principles and make them practical.

Substitute ‚damn‘ every time you’re inclined to write ‚very‘; your editor will delete it and the writing will be just as it should be.

The reason why men do not obey us, is because they see the mud at the bottom of our eye.

Whenever a husband and wife begin to discuss their marriage they are giving evidence at a coroner’s inquest.

What is uttered from the heart alone, Will win the hearts of others to your own.

I took the vow of celibacy in 1906. I had not shared my thoughts with my wife until then, but only consulted her at the time of making the vow. She had no objection.

Silence is more eloquent than words.

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

I just want you to know that, when we talk about war, we’re really talking about peace.

Both times I was in India, I could not get people to listen to each other. I had to literally tell people to listen to each other and tell them that they can’t get creative and find alternate solutions if they don’t listen to each other. There’s a lot of arguing and justifying.

Sometimes I wonder if we shall ever grow up in our politics and say definite things which mean something, or whether we shall always go on using generalities to which everyone can subscribe, and which mean very little.

I’ve always wanted male friends that I could be real intimate with and talk about important things with and be as affectionate with that person as I would be with a girl.

If you reveal your secrets to the wind, you should not blame the wind for revealing them to the trees.

One of my direct subordinates, one of my guys that worked for me, he would call me up or pull me aside with some major problem, some issue that was going on. And he’d say, ‚Boss, we’ve got this, and that, and the other thing.‘ And I’d look at him and I’d say, ‚Good.‘

We are all pleased when our names are pronounced and spelled correctly.

All men hate the nagging.

The difficulty with this conversation is that it’s very different from most of the ones I’ve had of late. Which, as I explained, have mostly been with trees.

Using e-mail, I can communicate with scientists all over the world.

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 trying to make God more relevant in our society. And I think talking in everyday terms and making sure people can understand it – I think that’s important.

I don’t understand why or how we can bully each other.

If you’re nice to me I’ll never write anything bad about you.

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.

The language of excitement is at best picturesque merely. You must be calm before you can utter oracles.

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

The superior man acts before he speaks, and afterwards speaks according to his action.

My heroes don’t have anything special. They have something to tell other people but they don’t know how, so they talk to themselves.

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

Of course, there are those critics – New York critics as a rule – who say, ‚Well, Maya Angelou has a new book out and of course it’s good but then she’s a natural writer.‘ Those are the ones I want to grab by the throat and wrestle to the floor because it takes me forever to get it to sing. I work at the language.

Facebook is really about communicating and telling stories… We think that people can really help spread awareness of organ donation and that they want to participate in this to their friends. And that can be a big part of helping solve the crisis that’s out there.

On TV the people can see it. On radio you’ve got to create it.

Prayer is simply a two-way conversation between you and God.

It is very hard to not be able to engage with people in a real and honest way because they either want something from me, or they see me as something that I simply am not.

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

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

Woe to the makers of literal translations, who by rendering every word weaken the meaning! It is indeed by so doing that we can say the letter kills and the spirit gives life.

I have to be in tune. All the time. I have to be in tune with my husband, where he is, how he’s feeling. I have to be in tune with where my family is.

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

Money has a language of its own.

I am a good listener. I think that came from my schooling.

The problem with having a sense of humor is often that people you use it on aren’t in a very good mood.

The mind unlearns with difficulty what it has long learned.

The mouth obeys poorly when the heart murmurs.

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.

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

I think that a president needs to have a variety of views presented. But also, there has to be a team effort, because otherwise, I think it creates a dissonance and difficulty.

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.

All knowledge which ends in words will die as quickly as it came to life, with the exception of the written word: which is its mechanical part.

In the early days of the military Arpanet, my daughter was studying in Nicaragua. Because the U.S. was essentially at war with them, contact was difficult. I managed to use MIT’s Arpanet connection, and she found one, so we could communicate thanks to the Pentagon!

You can’t talk your way out of problems you behave yourself into.

I can unload my opinion on anybody at anytime.