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

I think humans are just hard-wired to process people’s faces and understand meaning and expression at such a more granular level than other types of communication.

Effective communication is 20% what you know and 80% how you feel about what you know.

I didn’t play with other children.

Everything becomes a little different as soon as it is spoken out loud.

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

I have a family, loving aunts, and a good home. No, on the surface I seem to have everything except my one true friend. All I think about when I’m with friends is having a good time. I can’t bring myself to talk about anything but ordinary everyday things. We don’t seem to be able to get any closer, and that’s the problem.

When I’m nervous, I stutter, and I had to keep stopping and starting.

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.

People respond in accordance to how you relate to them. If you approach them on the basis of violence, that’s how they’ll react. But if you say, ‚We want peace, we want stability,‘ we can then do a lot of things that will contribute towards the progress of our society.

I was gratified to be able to answer promptly, and I did. I said I didn’t know.

Ethiopia didn’t just blow my mind; it opened my mind. Anyway, on our last day at this orphanage a man handed me his baby and said, ‚Would you take my son with you?‘ He knew, in Ireland, that his son would live, and that in Ethiopia, his son would die.

Nothing is so unbelievable that oratory cannot make it acceptable.

There is an optical illusion about every person we meet.

We want everybody to act like adults, quit playing games, realize that it’s not just my way or the highway.

‚Good English‘ is whatever educated people talk; so that what is good in one place or time would not be so in another.

For, if a good speaker, never so eloquent, does not see into the fact, and is not speaking the truth of that – is there a more horrid kind of object in creation?

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.

No one would choose a friendless existence on condition of having all the other things in the world.

Men exist for the sake of one another.

Never marry someone in hope that they’ll change later.

Great leaders are almost always great simplifiers, who can cut through argument, debate and doubt, to offer a solution everybody can understand.

I think some of my colleagues‘ spicier lines are distracting. They draw attention away from what the justice is trying to say.

War is what happens when language fails.

Always try to use the language so as to make quite clear what you mean and make sure your sentence couldn’t mean anything else.

He must be very ignorant for he answers every question he is asked.

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.

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.

You don’t lead by hitting people over the head – that’s assault, not leadership.

Constant kindness can accomplish much. As the sun makes ice melt, kindness causes misunderstanding, mistrust, and hostility to evaporate.

We are all so much together, but we are all dying of loneliness.

If you want peace, you don’t talk to your friends. You talk to your enemies.

If you’ve heard this story before, don’t stop me, because I’d like to hear it again.

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

We live in an image society. Speeches are not what anybody cares about; what they care about is the picture.

The difficulty with this conversation is that it’s very different from most of the ones I’ve had of late. Which, as I explained, have mostly been with trees.

A speech idiosyncrasy, in the same way as an air quote, is really justifiable only if it’s employed very sparingly and if the user consciously intends to be using it.

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

I’m modern because I make the difficult seem easy, and so I can communicate with the whole world.

The instruction we find in books is like fire. We fetch it from our neighbours, kindle it at home, communicate it to others, and it becomes the property of all.

I don’t have faith in young people any more. I don’t waste time trying to communicate with them.

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

Newspapers are the second hand of history. This hand, however, is usually not only of inferior metal to the other hands, it also seldom works properly.

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

Women prefer to talk in twos, while men prefer to talk in threes.

Words are cheap. The biggest thing you can say is ‚elephant‘.

Children wish fathers looked but with their eyes; fathers that children with their judgment looked; and either may be wrong.

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

Quote me as saying I was mis-quoted.

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

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.

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

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

Tell them to send everything that can fly.

It’s a rather rude gesture, but at least it’s clear what you mean.

I want to negotiate what I’m worth. I want to put my analytics forward, man-to-man, and to be like, ‚This is what I’m owed now. Pay me.‘ And then we can talk.

My name can’t be that tough to pronounce!

Short words are best and the old words when short are best of all.

Our schools and colleges are turning out people who cannot feel fulfilled unless they are telling other people what to do.

Music helps me tell my story. That’s where I can really be heard. But there’s so much focus on the things that aren’t music.

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