Silence is safer than speech.

He that hath knowledge spareth his words.

You will not be punished for your anger, you will be punished by your anger.

The essence of all art is to have pleasure in giving pleasure.

Irrespective of age, we mourn for those loved and lost. Mourning is one of the deepest expressions of pure love.

I’m the most recognized and loved man that ever lived cuz there weren’t no satellites when Jesus and Moses were around, so people far away in the villages didn’t know about them.

People are always coming up to me and saying, ‚I heard your dad’s speech, and it’s really great.‘ And they’ll mention some place I didn’t even know my dad was going to.

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.

I think perhaps the most important problem is that we are trying to understand the fundamental workings of the universe via a language devised for telling one another when the best fruit is.

To keep oneself safe does not mean to bury oneself.

The only way to get rid of temptation is to yield to it… I can resist everything but temptation.

I’m blessed to have such a tight-knit family that we can talk about anything. Whether we talk frequently or not, since we’re on separate ends of the country, there are a lot of moving parts, and we always stay tight and find that center ground that keeps us together.

Circumstances are beyond human control, but our conduct is in our own power.

They who can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary safety deserve neither liberty nor safety.

There should be an honest attempt at the reconciliation of differences before resorting to combat.

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

Don’t be too harsh to these poems until they’re typed. I always think typescript lends some sort of certainty: at least, if the things are bad then, they appear to be bad with conviction.

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

There is but one way for a president to deal with Congress, and that is continuously, incessantly, and without interruption. If it is really going to work, the relationship has got to be almost incestuous.

In a certain way, it’s the sound of the words, the inflection and the way the song is sung and the way it fits the melody and the way the syllables are on the tongue that has as much of the meaning as the actual, literal words.

Few people are capable of expressing with equanimity opinions which differ from the prejudices of their social environment. Most people are even incapable of forming such opinions.

Why should poetry have to make sense?

Poetry surrounds us everywhere, but putting it on paper is, alas, not so easy as looking at it.

I know what I do for my team and what my teammates expect of me on both ends of the floor.

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.

Questions are never indiscreet, answers sometimes are.

I wanted to be a doctor that I might be able to work without having to talk because for years I had been giving myself out in words.

My first phone was two tin cans tied together with string, and it worked pretty good.

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

Virtue consists, not in abstaining from vice, but in not desiring it.

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.

You cannot always control what goes on outside. But you can always control what goes on inside.

Silence is the element in which great things fashion themselves together; that at length they may emerge, full-formed and majestic, into the delight of life, which they are thenceforth to rule.

In true dialogue, both sides are willing to change.

We fear that this moment will end, that we won’t get what we need, that we will lose what we love, or that we will not be safe. Often, our biggest fear is the knowledge that one day our bodies will cease functioning. So even when we are surrounded by all the conditions for happiness, our joy is not complete.

Most negotiators are trying to get their way.

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.

Always be sincere, even if you don’t mean it.

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

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

One has to secrete a jelly in which to slip quotations down people’s throats – and one always secretes too much jelly.

Why did I write? Because I found life unsatisfactory.

Often, little situations trigger enormous reactions. Be there, present for it. Your partner will find it easier to see it in you, and you will find it easier to see it in them.

In our time political speech and writing are largely the defense of the indefensible.

If you go back a few hundred years, what we take for granted today would seem like magic – being able to talk to people over long distances, to transmit images, flying, accessing vast amounts of data like an oracle. These are all things that would have been considered magic a few hundred years ago.

Letters are something from you. It’s a different kind of intention than writing an e-mail.

I would like to be remembered as a guy who had a set of priorities, and was willing to live by those priorities. In terms of accomplishments, my biggest accomplishment is that I kept the country safe amidst a real danger.

I feel, as a songwriter, it’s one of the hardest things to do – to sit down and say how you feel.

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.

You may not control all the events that happen to you, but you can decide not to be reduced by them.

Tell the truth, but tell it slant.

I could talk all day, T stands for talking, T stands for tender, T stands for things that don’t even rhyme with T.

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

Occasionally I’ve seen children become heavy-handed and insensitive when dealing with their aging parents, and it only caused resentment and hard feelings.

I meant what I said and I said what I meant.

Let not him who is houseless pull down the house of another, but let him work diligently and build one for himself, thus by example assuring that his own shall be safe from violence when built.

I’m not always going to say things the perfect way, the right way. But I’m going to say how I feel.

Tears are the silent language of grief.

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

Time was when they that feared the Lord spake often to one another; I am afraid that now they more often speak one against another.

I used to stutter really badly. Everybody thinks it’s funny. And it’s not funny. It’s not.