Proselytism is solemn nonsense; it makes no sense. We need to get to know each other, listen to each other and improve our knowledge of the world around us.

Don’t ever take a fence down until you know why it was put up.

If it’s going to come out eventually, better have it come out immediately.

Just as the soul fills the body, so God fills the world. Just as the soul bears the body, so God endures the world. Just as the soul sees but is not seen, so God sees but is not seen. Just as the soul feeds the body, so God gives food to the world.

Those who cannot understand how to put their thoughts on ice should not enter into the heat of debate.

Put it this way: If I asked, ‚How’s business?‘ and you say, ‚Boomin‘ or ‚Amazing,‘ I already know the answer.

I don’t hate women – they just sometimes make me mad.

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.

America… just a nation of two hundred million used car salesmen with all the money we need to buy guns and no qualms about killing anybody else in the world who tries to make us uncomfortable.

No book includes the entire world. It’s limited. And so it doesn’t seem like an aesthetic compromise to have to do that. There’s so much other material to write about.

Knowledge of human nature is the beginning and end of political education.

Remind yourself that winning an argument or proving your point really gets you nowhere in the long run. Win through your actions, not your words.

Before I speak, I have something important to say.

All the knowledge I possess everyone else can acquire, but my heart is all my own.

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

If you must speak ill of another, do not speak it, write it in the sand near the water’s edge.

Even if it turns out that time travel is impossible, it is important that we understand why it is impossible.

He that will believe only what he can fully comprehend must have a long head or a very short creed.

The world has not yet reached the point which, in my view, is an essential condition for the survival of our human species: access by all the peoples to the material resources of this planet.

Although personally I am quite content with existing explosives, I feel we must not stand in the path of improvement.

There are a lot of self-imposed restrictions by people who somehow believe they have to fall in with a certain military cant. There was always a sense that we had to put things into words that would touch our troops‘ hearts, not just their heads.

Metaphysics means nothing but an unusually obstinate effort to think clearly.

When words are scarce they are seldom spent in vain.

Skype actually does get a fair bit of revenue.

We build too many walls and not enough bridges.

When I do listen to music, I’m more prone to listen to the people I’ve always listened to: George Jones, Otis Redding, Alison Krauss and Emmylou Harris.

Brevity and conciseness are the parents of correction.

This world is but a canvas to our imagination.

Little children, you are from God, and have conquered them; for the one who is in you is greater than the one who is in this world.

What makes us human, I think, is an ability to ask questions, a consequence of our sophisticated spoken language.

Who you are speaks so loudly I can’t hear what you’re saying.

Being flooded with information doesn’t mean we have the right information or that we’re in touch with the right people.

All men hate the nagging.

Knowledge is of two kinds. We know a subject ourselves, or we know where we can find information upon it.

Please don’t ask me to do that which I’ve just said I’m not going to do, because you’re burning up time. The meter is running through the sand on you, and I am now filibustering.

Be careful to leave your sons well instructed rather than rich, for the hopes of the instructed are better than the wealth of the ignorant.

Knowledge which is acquired under compulsion obtains no hold on the mind.

No one lives long enough to learn everything they need to learn starting from scratch. To be successful, we absolutely, positively have to find people who have already paid the price to learn the things that we need to learn to achieve our goals.

Good men by nature, wish to know. I know that many will call this useless work… men who desire nothing but material riches and are absolutely devoid of that of wisdom, which is the food and only true riches of the mind.

Talk that does not end in any kind of action is better suppressed altogether.

The brain is like a muscle. When it is in use we feel very good. Understanding is joyous.

You don’t write because you want to say something, you write because you have something to say.

In my neighborhood, when you’ve got something to say to a guy, you look him in the eye and you say it to him.

The most important things are the hardest things to say. They are the things you get ashamed of because words diminish your feelings – words shrink things that seem timeless when they are in your head to no more than living size when they are brought out.

The duty of rhetoric is to deal with such matters as we deliberate upon without arts or systems to guide us, in the hearing of persons who cannot take in at a glance a complicated argument or follow a long chain of reasoning.

Half the world is composed of people who have something to say and can’t, and the other half who have nothing to say and keep on saying it.

God never gives someone a gift they are not capable of receiving. If he gives us the gift of Christmas, it is because we all have the ability to understand and receive it.

Education is an admirable thing, but it is well to remember from time to time that nothing that is worth knowing can be taught.

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

No one ever doubts that I mean what I say. The problem is I sometimes say all that I mean.

The natural desire of good men is knowledge.

Woman begins by resisting a man’s advances and ends by blocking his retreat.

None of us will ever accomplish anything excellent or commanding except when he listens to this whisper which is heard by him alone.

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 human intercourse the tragedy begins, not when there is misunderstanding about words, but when silence is not understood.

One merit of poetry few persons will deny: it says more and in fewer words than prose.

Nothing is capable of being well set to music that is not nonsense.

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.

When ignorance gets started it knows no bounds.

If the tongue had not been framed for articulation, man would still be a beast in the forest.

The people to fear are not those who disagree with you, but those who disagree with you and are too cowardly to let you know.