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.

The most important single ingredient in the formula of success is knowing how to get along with people.

Songs for me are like a message in a bottle. You send them out to the world, and maybe the person who you feel that way about will hear about it someday.

I have learned from personal experience that putting trust in God means there will be some unanswered questions. That was a hard lesson for me because I naturally want to understand everything… to know what’s going on so I can feel like I’m in control.

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

You hear doom and gloom about the Internet ruining young people’s command of English – that’s nonsense.

A friend of mine tells that I talk in shorthand and then smudge it.

It is only a man’s own fundamental thoughts that have truth and life in them. For it is these that he really and completely understands. To read the thoughts of others is like taking the remains of someone else’s meal, like putting on the discarded clothes of a stranger.

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.

We make war that we may live in peace.

Respect the burden.

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.

The fact that you are willing to say, ‚I do not understand, and it is fine,‘ is the greatest understanding you could exhibit.

I’m really bad with answering questions. Usually, I don’t even answer them. I try to find inspiration inside of the question. I think, and I jump from one beam of inspiration or energy to the next, as opposed to explaining the energy.

Talk well of the absent whenever you have the opportunity.

It has always been a mystery to me how men can feel themselves honoured by the humiliation of their fellow beings.

When I am talking to people who I feel don’t like me or are mean, I get really shy, and I kind of curl up personality wise.

My wife and I don’t compete. We know each other’s preferences, and we work to provide those for each other. One will take over when the other is faced with something he or she dislikes. That’s what friends do.

Let your heart feel for the afflictions and distress of everyone, and let your hand give in proportion to your purse.

Many a doctrine is like a window pane. We see truth through it but it divides us from truth.

An association of men who will not quarrel with one another is a thing which has never yet existed, from the greatest confederacy of nations down to a town meeting or a vestry.

The history of science shows that theories are perishable. With every new truth that is revealed we get a better understanding of Nature and our conceptions and views are modified.

Back, you know, a few generations ago, people didn’t have a way to share information and express their opinions efficiently to a lot of people. But now they do. Right now, with social networks and other tools on the Internet, all of these 500 million people have a way to say what they’re thinking and have their voice be heard.

I have no human feelings.

Compassion, in which all ethics must take root, can only attain its full breadth and depth if it embraces all living creatures and does not limit itself to mankind.

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

Ultimately, a real understanding of history means that we face nothing new under the sun.

I’ve never understood why people consider youth a time of freedom and joy. It’s probably because they have forgotten their own.

Hell is yourself and the only redemption is when a person puts himself aside to feel deeply for another person.

A mother defends herself with a heart filled with love before doing so with words. I wonder whether there is any love for the church in the hearts of those who pay so much attention to the scandals.

It was books that taught me that the things that tormented me most were the very things that connected me with all the people who were alive, or who had ever been alive.

I love reading people. I really enjoy watching, observing, and being able to figure out a person, the reason they wore that dress, the reason they smell the way they do.

Whoever is spared personal pain must feel himself called to help in diminishing the pain of others. We must all carry our share of the misery which lies upon the world.

War is a game that is played with a smile. If you can’t smile, grin. If you can’t grin, keep out of the way till you can.

I see myself in all the people in the world who are suffering and who are very badly treated and who are often made to feel that they have no place on this Earth.

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

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.

Every day we should hear at least one little song, read one good poem, see one exquisite picture, and, if possible, speak a few sensible words.

How you go about testing is just very different to just being in the situation of qualifying, having to go out, having to nail the lap.

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

Love is the ability and willingness to allow those that you care for to be what they choose for themselves without any insistence that they satisfy you.

Knowledge can be communicated, but not wisdom. One can find it, live it, be fortified by it, do wonders through it, but one cannot communicate and teach it.

Our heritage and ideals, our code and standards – the things we live by and teach our children – are preserved or diminished by how freely we exchange ideas and feelings.

Some people talk in their sleep. Lecturers talk while other people sleep.

A better world shall emerge based on faith and understanding.

In my divorce, I stood up and said to my ex-wife, ‚Hey, I messed up. This had nothing to do with you. I didn’t understand what marriage was. I cheated. I was wrong. We couldn’t fix it; it got worse. I stepped away because I didn’t want it to get any worse. You’re the mother of my kids – I don’t want to hate you.‘

War is not an independent phenomenon, but the continuation of politics by different means.

Understand: any phenomenon in the world is by nature complex. The people you deal with are equally complex. Any action sets off a limitless chain of reactions. It is never so simple as A leads to B. B will lead to C, D and beyond.

There was never a good war, or a bad peace.

I’m not generally a sensitive person, but I tend to be more sensitive toward others and what they’re going through. I don’t know if that’s the healthiest thing, but it’s the truth.

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

Silence is argument carried out by other means.

We all want to help one another. Human beings are like that. We want to live by each other’s happiness, not by each other’s misery.

Skype actually does get a fair bit of revenue.

Communications technology changes possibilities for communication, but that doesn’t mean it changes the inherited structure of the brain. So you may think that you’re addicted to online reading, but as soon as it isn’t available anymore, your brain will pretty immediately adjust to other forms of reading. It’s a habit like all habits.

If you have the chance to be exposed to a loving, understanding environment where the seed of compassion, loving kindness, can be watered every day, then you become a more loving person.

No weapon has ever settled a moral problem. It can impose a solution but it cannot guarantee it to be a just one.

You can sometimes play some really good football and not score.

Truthful words are not beautiful; beautiful words are not truthful. Good words are not persuasive; persuasive words are not good.

No one can lie, no one can hide anything, when he looks directly into someone’s eyes.

One of the most beautiful qualities of true friendship is to understand and to be understood.