Speeches that are measured by the hour will die with the hour.

Never find fault with the absent.

Because in a split second, it’s gone.

I can unload my opinion on anybody at anytime.

If your customer base is aging with you, then eventually you are going to become obsolete or irrelevant. You need to be constantly figuring out who are your new customers and what are you doing to stay forever young.

When you really don’t like a guy, they’re all over you, and as soon as you act like you like them, they’re no longer interested.

Do not tell fish stories where the people know you; but particularly, don’t tell them where they know the fish.

When I write, the story is always uppermost in my mind, and I feel that everything must be sacrificed to it. All elegant passages, all the curious details, all the so-called beautiful writing – if they are not truly relevant to what I am trying to say, then they have to go.

If we accept being talked to any kind of a way, then we are telling ourselves we are not quite worth the best. And if we have the effrontery to talk to anybody with less than courtesy, we tell ourselves and the world we are not very intelligent.

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

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.

Stage actors are usually much more conscious of speaking up and making sure that everyone can hear in the back of the theatre; a film actor probably thinks of that a little less.

If you want to talk about something new, you have to make up a new kind of language.

Before a man speaks it is always safe to assume that he is a fool. After he speaks, it is seldom necessary to assume it.

I exaggerate when I’m angry, but I’ve never gone around telling people things that aren’t true about me.

If you want to get each individual’s honest opinion, you don’t want that opinion to be influenced by others who are present, much less allow a group to coordinate what they are going to say.

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.

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

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.

The finest workers in stone are not copper or steel tools, but the gentle touches of air and water working at their leisure with a liberal allowance of time.

For most of us, wisdom is acquired in the thicket of experience and usually meets us somewhere along the way if we live long enough. But sooner is better than later.

Listen to many, speak to a few.

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

If time is not real, then the dividing line between this world and eternity, between suffering and bliss, between good and evil, is also an illusion.

By and large, language is a tool for concealing the truth.

Thinking: the talking of the soul with itself.

If you can look into the seeds of time, and say which grain will grow and which will not, speak then unto me.

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

All our words from loose using have lost their edge.

I don’t want to just preach to the church. I feel like I have a broader message.

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

Speaking English is like tongue-twist for me. I can speak each word perfect, but then you have to string them together like, ‚Blah, blah, blah.‘ That’s when I get crazy.

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.

Better understated than overstated. Let people be surprised that it was more than you promised and easier than you said.

I don’t know about you, but most of my exchanges with cashiers are not that meaningful.

I’m not really good at fun-to-know, human interest stuff. We’re not ‚celebrities‘, whose life itself is a performance. Good or bad or ugly, we are our words. They’re what people meet.

If you want what you’re saying heard, then take your time and say it so that the listener will actually hear it. You might save somebody’s life. Your own, first.

If danger arises in the present moment, there may be an emotion. There may even be pain. But that’s a challenge, not a problem. For a problem to exist, you need time and repetitive mind activity.

Without tact you can learn nothing.

Each day we understand better what the Indians say, and they us, so that very often we are intelligible to each other.

We are masters of the unsaid words, but slaves of those we let slip out.

Charm is a way of getting the answer ‚Yes‘ without asking a clear question.

Marriage is a series of desperate arguments people feel passionately about.

By gnawing through a dike, even a rat may drown a nation.

Arguments are to be avoided: they are always vulgar and often convincing.

The question isn’t, ‚What do we want to know about people?‘, It’s, ‚What do people want to tell about themselves?‘

Speak low, if you speak love.

It should be possible to explain the laws of physics to a barmaid.

Information is the oxygen of the modern age. It seeps through the walls topped by barbed wire, it wafts across the electrified borders.

The next time someone tells you we can trim the budget by cutting aid, I hope you will ask whether it will come at the cost of more people dying.

Glance into the world just as though time were gone: and everything crooked will become straight to you.

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

Both in thought and in feeling, even though time be real, to realise the unimportance of time is the gate of wisdom.

Time itself comes in drops.

We usually lose today, because there has been a yesterday, and tomorrow is coming.

The common thread for everything I do is this idea of a Web-services architecture. What does that mean? It means taking components of software and systems and having them be self-describing, so that you can aim them, ask them what their capabilities are, and communicate with them using a standard protocol.

It’s not a slam at you when people are rude, it’s a slam at the people they’ve met before.

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.

Whenever you’re in conflict with someone, there is one factor that can make the difference between damaging your relationship and deepening it. That factor is attitude.

The capability of negotiating… is something that means you not only have to understand fully what you believe and what your national interests are but in order to be a really good negotiator, you have to try to figure out what the other person on the other side of the table has in mind.

Hate and force cannot be in just a part of the world without having an effect on the rest of it.