The essence of lying is in deception, not in words.

Plato is dear to me, but dearer still is truth.

When I was in college I did a lot of stupid things and I don’t want to make an excuse for that. Some of the things that people accuse me of are true, some of them aren’t. There are pranks, IMs.

Rhetoric may be defined as the faculty of observing in any given case the available means of persuasion. This is not a function of any other art.

Justice is truth in action.

The truth is incontrovertible. Malice may attack it, ignorance may deride it, but in the end, there it is.

Faith: not wanting to know what is true.

It is more from carelessness about truth than from intentionally lying that there is so much falsehood in the world.

Anger cannot be dishonest.

All the war-propaganda, all the screaming and lies and hatred, comes invariably from people who are not fighting.

I suppose my best attribute, if you want to call it that, is sincerity. I can sell sincerity because that’s the way I am.

The minority is sometimes right; the majority always wrong.

So near is falsehood to truth that a wise man would do well not to trust himself on the narrow edge.

In the early days of the military Arpanet, my daughter was studying in Nicaragua. Because the U.S. was essentially at war with them, contact was difficult. I managed to use MIT’s Arpanet connection, and she found one, so we could communicate thanks to the Pentagon!

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

Our character is what we do when we think no one is looking.

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.

A man has a property in his opinions and the free communication of them.

All cruel people describe themselves as paragons of frankness.

When I tell a child something the first time, I’m nice. The 15th time, I start to get aggravated.

The secret of life is honesty and fair dealing. If you can fake that, you’ve got it made.

If you wish to know the mind of a man, listen to his words.

Something unpleasant is coming when men are anxious to tell the truth.

If there is any one secret of success, it lies in the ability to get the other person’s point of view and see things from that person’s angle as well as from your own.

It may be the part of a friend to rebuke a friend’s folly.

A nation that is afraid to let its people judge the truth and falsehood in an open market is a nation that is afraid of its people.

In everything truth surpasses the imitation and copy.

Every time somebody speaks of my honesty, there is someone who quivers inside me.

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

I’m a great believer that any tool that enhances communication has profound effects in terms of how people can learn from each other, and how they can achieve the kind of freedoms that they’re interested in.

I like the way the stories of my relationships sound to music more than the way they look in print, in gossip columns or in me talking about them in interviews. I think it’s a better way of telling the stories.

To die for an idea; it is unquestionably noble. But how much nobler it would be if men died for ideas that were true!

Men govern nothing with more difficulty than their tongues, and can moderate their desires more than their words.

President Assad, I worked with. I know him reasonably well, met with him a few times, and he’s a liar.

Men occasionally stumble over the truth, but most of them pick themselves up and hurry off as if nothing had happened.

Use what language you will, you can never say anything but what you are.

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

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

All great truths begin as blasphemies.

I just write songs that I strongly believe in and that are coming from inside. There’s no tricks. It’s honesty with big melodies.

I refuse to accept the view that mankind is so tragically bound to the starless midnight of racism and war that the bright daybreak of peace and brotherhood can never become a reality… I believe that unarmed truth and unconditional love will have the final word.

An error does not become truth by reason of multiplied propagation, nor does truth become error because nobody sees it.

When I am getting ready to reason with a man, I spend one-third of my time thinking about myself and what I am going to say and two-thirds about him and what he is going to say.

The issues a president faces are not black and white, and cannot be boiled down into 140 characters. Because when you have the nuclear codes at your fingertips and the military at your command, you can’t make snap decisions. You can’t have a thin skin or the tendency to lash out.

Faith embraces many truths which seem to contradict each other.

Premature certainty is the enemy of the truth.

I make friends faster and easier than journalists.

If you make listening and observation your occupation you will gain much more than you can by talk.

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

Words do two major things: They provide food for the mind and create light for understanding and awareness.

I do not, in fact, use many puns. Certainly there are far fewer than people believe. But I suspect the ones I do occasionally use tend to hang around in people’s memories for a while.

If you tell the truth, you don’t have to remember anything.

I think, a lot of times when you meet someone, you feel like you need to appear like you’re not interested in them so that they’ll be more interested in you. But what happens when you start showing him that you actually like him? What’s he gonna do then? Play the tape forward; how do you keep a guy like that? I don’t want to sign up for that.

Man is least himself when he talks in his own person. Give him a mask, and he will tell you the truth.

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

All slang is metaphor, and all metaphor is poetry.

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

The world would be happier if men had the same capacity to be silent that they have to speak.

Proselytism is solemn nonsense; it makes no sense. We need to get to know each other, listen to each other and improve our knowledge of the world around us.

Few friendships would survive if each one knew what his friend says of him behind his back.

Man will occasionally stumble over the truth, but most of the time he will pick himself up and continue on.