Sometimes when you take strong stands, if you’re not called to do it, you’re dividing the audience you’re trying to reach.

I try to speak plainly so that my constituents who don’t follow the nuances of government like I do, because they’re too busy earning a real living, can understand the issues before me. None of this stuff is brain surgery.

Comedy’s about opening up and being unique, but to a point where the audience can relate to what you’re saying.

Talking, it seemed to me, was the point of adult existence.

Speak low, if you speak love.

I like to speak on matters which matter to human beings, and almost everything matters to human beings.

We cannot always oblige; but we can always speak obligingly.

The more you know the less you need to say.

I think one of the basic reasons men make good friends is that they can make up their minds quickly.

Never speak to an invalid from behind, nor from the door, nor from any distance from him, nor when he is doing anything. The official politeness of servants in these things is so grateful to invalids, that many prefer, without knowing why, having none but servants about them.

I don’t know how to work a room. It’s a real skill.

When you make as many speeches and you talk as much as I do and you get away from the text, it’s always a possibility to get a few words tangled here and there.

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

I don’t like typing messages on my phone. Some people get used to it.

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

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.

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

A good leader can engage in a debate frankly and thoroughly, knowing that at the end he and the other side must be closer, and thus emerge stronger. You don’t have that idea when you are arrogant, superficial, and uninformed.

My friend has a baby. I’m recording all the noises he makes so later I can ask him what he meant.

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.

People don’t realise how difficult it is to work with people day in and day out that know absolutely nothing.

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.

Happy is the hearing man; unhappy the speaking man.

I don’t like talking to celebrities.

You always have to remember that if you say something negative, it’s going to come back to haunt you.

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

Sometimes the hardest thing to do is to trust your team. It’s a lesson I’ve had to relearn quite a few times.

I learned from my dog long before I went to Gombe that we weren’t the only beings with personalities. What the chimps did was help me to persuade others.

People talk to people who perceive nothing, who have open eyes and see nothing; they shall talk to them and receive no answer; they shall adore those who have ears and hear nothing; they shall burn lamps for those who do not see.

When I woke up this morning my girlfriend asked me, ‚Did you sleep good?‘ I said ‚No, I made a few mistakes.‘

The best way to give advice to your children is to find out what they want and then advise them to do it.

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

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

Never ask anyone over 70 how they feel. They’ll tell you.

Don’t ever call a guy first. The thing they want the most is whatever they can’t have. It sounds really juvenile, but it works.

I get to hear the really good or the really bad things in the press, but I don’t read it. I can afford to say that because public opinion does not drive U2’s audience.

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.

Insults are the arguments employed by those who are in the wrong.

Before I lost my voice, it was slurred, so only those close to me could understand, but with the computer voice, I found I could give popular lectures. I enjoy communicating science. It is important that the public understands basic science, if they are not to leave vital decisions to others.

In true dialogue, both sides are willing to change.

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.

To find out your real opinion of someone, judge the impression you have when you first see a letter from them.

If you can’t convince them, confuse them.

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

Is it not important to find out how to listen not only to what is being said but to everything – to the noise in the streets, to the chatter of birds, to the noise of the tramcar, to the restless sea, to the voice of your husband, to your wife, to your friends, to the cry of a baby?

It’s one of the few regrets of my presidency – that the rancor and suspicion between the parties has gotten worse instead of better. There’s no doubt a president with the gifts of Lincoln or Roosevelt might have better bridged the divide, and I guarantee I’ll keep trying to be better so long as I hold this office.

A person who thinks only about building walls, wherever they may be, and not building bridges is not Christian. This is not in the Gospel.

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.

Silence speaks so much louder than screaming tantrums. Never give anyone an excuse to say that you’re crazy.

Though I do manage to mumble around in about seven or eight languages, English remains the most beautiful of languages. It will do anything.

One might say that our words are a movie screen that reveals what we have been thinking and the attitudes we have.

When words are scarce they are seldom spent in vain.

We are symbols, and inhabit symbols.

Whatever words we utter should be chosen with care for people will hear them and be influenced by them for good or ill.

Debates, I hate.

When I was young, an eccentric uncle decided to teach me how to lie. Not, he explained, because he wanted me to lie, but because he thought I should know how it’s done so I would recognise when I was being lied to.

Our most tragic error may have been our inability to establish a rapport and a confidence with the press and television with the communication media. I don’t think the press has understood me.

Mind your speech a little lest you should mar your fortunes.

Yes, I’m always – I’m always surprised when you make a film and you live with it a while and you put it out, you never dream that anybody is ever going to want to really see it.

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

We build too many walls and not enough bridges.