People are generally amazed that I would take an interest in any forum that would require me to stop talking for three hours.

The difference between a stranger sending you a message that you might be interested in at a very low volume level, no repetition, just sending it to very few people, and that being done as spam – those things get close enough that you want to be careful never to filter out something that’s legitimate.

Being politically correct means saying what’s polite rather than what’s accurate. I like to be accurate.

Dialogue means debates and everyone’s point of view.

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

People have to talk about something just to keep their voice boxes in working order so they’ll have good voice boxes in case there’s ever anything really meaningful to say.

Once people are aware of your presence, and perhaps vaguely intrigued, you need to stir their interest before it settles on someone else.

Words are also actions, and actions are a kind of words.

The arts have only ever interested a small minority of people, which acted as a kind of nursery to support artists.

My wife doesn’t even want to spend 2 hours with me.

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.

I was also a junior and I know how you learn from seniors, that’s how you follow. Speeches don’t work.

Electric communication will never be a substitute for the face of someone who with their soul encourages another person to be brave and true.

We write for the same reason that we walk, talk, climb mountains or swim the oceans – because we can. We have some impulse within us that makes us want to explain ourselves to other human beings. That’s why we paint, that’s why we dare to love someone – because we have the impulse to explain who we are.

I think everyone should approach relationships from the perspective of playing it straight and giving someone the benefit of the doubt. Until he establishes that this is a game. And if it’s a game, you need to win. The best thing to do is just walk away from the table.

And all who told it added something new, and all who heard it, made enlargements too.

There are only two forces that unite men – fear and interest.

I can move any crowd.

If you deny people their own voice, you’ll have no idea of who they were.

I soothe my conscience now with the thought that it is better for hard words to be on paper than that Mummy should carry them in her heart.

If you can speak what you will never hear, if you can write what you will never read, you have done rare things.

A man’s face as a rule says more, and more interesting things, than his mouth, for it is a compendium of everything his mouth will ever say, in that it is the monogram of all this man’s thoughts and aspirations.

When I look at public opinion, I’m not far out of the mainstream. I’m in it, in many respects. In some respects, public opinion goes beyond anything I’ve ever said.

I don’t need therapy. I’m not going to see a therapist; comedy acts as my therapy. I put my problems out there. I talk about them. I talk about everything before anybody has a chance.

All my stepchildren carried the burden of my fame. Sometimes they would read terrible things about me, and I’d worry about whether it would hurt them. I would tell them: ‚Don’t hide these things from me. I’d rather you ask me these things straight out, and I’ll answer all your questions.‘

Music fills in for words a lot of the time when people don’t know what to say, and I think music can be more eloquent than words.

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.

Tell the truth, but tell it slant.

People are very reluctant to talk about their private lives but then you go to the internet and they’re much more open.

Our diplomacy and development budget is not just about reducing spending and finding efficiencies. We need a frank conversation about what we stand for as that ‚shining city on a hill.‘ And that conversation begins by acknowledging that we can’t do it on the cheap.

Everybody, to some extent, manipulates. Even children learn to cry when they want something. There are all kinds of subtle things we do to get others to follow our lead, not bother us, and so on.

It used to be the case, like you’d switch jobs, and then maybe you wouldn’t keep in touch with all the people that you knew from that old job, just because it was too hard. But one of the things that Facebook does is it makes it really easy to just stay in touch with all these people.

Quarrel? Nonsense; we have not quarreled. If one is not to get into a rage sometimes, what is the good of being friends?

Writing and cookery are just two different means of communication.

George is a radio announcer, and when he walks under a bridge… you can’t hear him talk.

Some say our national pastime is baseball. Not me. It’s gossip.

I don’t do Shakespeare. I don’t talk in that kind of broken English.

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

Politeness is to human nature what warmth is to wax.

Don’t use words too big for the subject. Don’t say ‚infinitely‘ when you mean ‚very‘; otherwise you’ll have no word left when you want to talk about something really infinite.

The more you are talked about the less powerful you are.

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.

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’ve often stood silent at a party for hours listening to my movie idols turn into dull and little people.

At Facebook, we build tools to help people connect with the people they want and share what they want, and by doing this we are extending people’s capacity to build and maintain relationships.

Dinner was made for eating, not for talking.

I’m very active on social media and see the huge impact it has on engaging with fans and being able to have a voice.

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.

Such a chimerical idea as telegraphing vocal sounds would indeed, to most minds, seem scarcely feasible enough to spend time in working over. I believe, however, that it is feasible and that I have got the cue to the solution of the problem.

Saying nothing… sometimes says the most.

Luckily for me, people don’t scream at me that much in my everyday life.

Before I speak, I have something important to say.

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

I never went to school more than six months in my life, but I can say this: that among my earliest recollections, I remember how, when a mere child, I used to get irritated when anybody talked to me in a way I could not understand.

Animation can explain whatever the mind of man can conceive. This facility makes it the most versatile and explicit means of communication yet devised for quick mass appreciation.

Repartee is something we think of twenty-four hours too late.

I like to listen. I have learned a great deal from listening carefully. Most people never listen.

Most negotiators are trying to get their way.

When you have a conflict, that means that there are truths that have to be addressed on each side of the conflict. And when you have a conflict, then it’s an educational process to try to resolve the conflict. And to resolve that, you have to get people on both sides of the conflict involved so that they can dialogue.

I don’t want to tell President Obama how to make a speech. He’s a much better speech maker than I am. But I think always to tell the truth in a sometimes blatant way, even though it might be temporarily unpopular, is the best approach.

One often contradicts an opinion when what is uncongenial is really the tone in which it was conveyed.