The true genius shudders at incompleteness – and usually prefers silence to saying something which is not everything it should be.

When it comes to gossip, I have to readily admit men are as guilty as women.

If you can speak what you will never hear, if you can write what you will never read, you have done rare things.

Words, words, mere words, no matter from the heart.

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

Words are more powerful than some noises. Noises won’t last long. Lyrics are so important, and people don’t realise that.

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.

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

There was never a genius without a tincture of madness.

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.

I’ll be glad to reply to or dodge your questions, depending on what I think will help our election most.

Yes, I, well, when I write, as often as I can, I try to write as if I’m talking to people. It doesn’t always work, and one shouldn’t always try it, but I try and write as if I am talking, and trying to engage the reader in conversation.

Just talk to me as a father – not what the Constitution says. What do you feel?

The American people are entitled to see the president and to hear his views directly, and not to see him only through the press.

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

Talking isn’t doing. It is a kind of good deed to say well; and yet words are not deeds.

Those who cannot understand how to put their thoughts on ice should not enter into the heat of debate.

Just as the humble, unassuming, assenting ‚O.K.‘ has deposed the more affirmative ‚Yes,‘ so the little cringe and hesitation and approximation of ‚like‘ are a help to young people who are struggling to negotiate the shoals and rapids of ethnic identity, the street, and general correctness.

I speak a number of languages, but none are more beautiful to me than English.

Most negotiators are trying to get their way.

Among the letters my readers write me, there is a certain category which is continuously growing, and which I see as a symptom of the increasing intellectualization of the relationship between readers and literature.

You’re never going to kill storytelling, because it’s built into the human plan. We come with it.

I sent one e-mail in my life. I sent it to Jeff Raikes at Microsoft, and it ended up in court in Minneapolis, so I am one for one.

The genius, wit, and the spirit of a nation are discovered by their proverbs.

I have found that no exertion of the legs can bring two minds much nearer to one another.

My mother always taught us that if people don’t agree with you, the important thing is to listen to them. But if you’ve listened to them carefully and you still think that you’re right, then you must have the courage of your convictions.

If you’re waiting for the perfect moment, you’ll never write a thing because it will never arrive. I have no routine. I have no foolproof anything. There’s nothing foolproof.

Sometimes, indeed, there is such a discrepancy between the genius and his human qualities that one has to ask oneself whether a little less talent might not have been better.

I do think that we’re gonna move towards this world where eventually you’ll be able to capture a whole experience that you’re in and be able to send that to someone.

I promised myself that I would write as well as I can, tell the truth, not to tell everything I know, but to make sure that everything I tell is true, as I understand it. And to use the eloquence which my language affords me.

I’m sure most parents read to their children to explain what certain things mean. So books are a good way to convey a message to anybody. Everybody reads.

Great is truth, but still greater, from a practical point of view, is silence about truth. By simply not mentioning certain subjects… totalitarian propagandists have influenced opinion much more effectively than they could have by the most eloquent denunciations.

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.

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

I’m trying to make God more relevant in our society. And I think talking in everyday terms and making sure people can understand it – I think that’s important.

I am not one who – who flamboyantly believes in throwing a lot of words around.

Facebook and Instagram are both really popular with teens, both in the U.S. and globally across the world. I think what you’re starting to see is that there are all these different ways that people want to share and communicate.

I write all my sermons.

Some animals utter a loud cry. Some are silent, and others have a voice, which in some cases may be expressed by a word; in others, it cannot. There are also noisy animals and silent animals, musical and unmusical kinds, but they are mostly noisy about the breeding season.

Next to doing the right thing, the most important thing is to let people know you are doing the right thing.

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

Ever since Newton, we’ve done science by taking things apart to see how they work. What the computer enables us to do is to put things together to see how they work: we’re now synthesized rather than analysed. I find one of the most enthralling aspects of computers is limitless communication.

Writing and cookery are just two different means of communication.

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

To me, it’s OK to have differences. But we don’t have to be mad about it. You know? And I think that’s where sometimes we get so passionate that we – you know, it turns into anger.

The right word may be effective, but no word was ever as effective as a rightly timed pause.

But let there be spaces in your togetherness and let the winds of the heavens dance between you. Love one another but make not a bond of love: let it rather be a moving sea between the shores of your souls.

People who have given us their complete confidence believe that they have a right to ours. The inference is false, a gift confers no rights.

Words are but the signs of ideas.

The capacity of human beings to bore one another seems to be vastly greater than that of any other animal.

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

I guess every single word I’ve ever said is going to be dissected now.

My daughter doesn’t even get my humor. She’s like, ‚Um, no. I don’t get it, Dad. Mmm, no, not that one, Dad.‘

As we must account for every idle word, so must we account for every idle silence.

Writing, to me, is simply thinking through my fingers.

What you guys want, I’m for.

Every day I try to be in communication with the universe in an unconscious way.

The American public’s a lot more sophisticated than we all give them credit for. And on complicated issues, I’m going to give them straight answers. And if it takes more than three minutes, I’m going to do it.

You don’t tell deliberate lies, but sometimes you have to be evasive.

An idea, like a ghost, must be spoken to a little before it will explain itself.

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