The world is never quiet, even its silence eternally resounds with the same notes, in vibrations which escape our ears. As for those that we perceive, they carry sounds to us, occasionally a chord, never a melody.

To the women and children, T stands for tender. To the bad guys and thugs, it stands for tough.

History will have to record that the greatest tragedy of this period of social transition was not the strident clamor of the bad people, but the appalling silence of the good people.

Poets say science takes away from the beauty of the stars – mere globs of gas atoms. I, too, can see the stars on a desert night, and feel them. But do I see less or more?

In the little world in which children have their existence, whosoever brings them up, there is nothing so finely perceived and so finely felt, as injustice.

Pictures and shapes are but secondary objects and please or displease only in the memory.

The world is all gates, all opportunities, strings of tension waiting to be struck.

People do dismiss ambient music, don’t they? They call it ‚easy listening,‘ as if to suggest that it should be hard to listen to.

Anybody can be specific and obvious. That’s always been the easy way. It’s not that it’s so difficult to be unspecific and less obvious; it’s just that there’s nothing, absolutely nothing, to be specific and obvious about.

The moment a person forms a theory, his imagination sees in every object only the traits which favor that theory.

The philosophical question before us is, when we make an observation of our track in the past, does the result of our observation become real in the same sense that the final state would be defined if an outside observer were to make the observation?

Too many of us look upon Americans as dollar chasers. This is a cruel libel, even if it is reiterated thoughtlessly by the Americans themselves.

People like to build their own story about my life. I don’t know if it makes them feel better, or if it makes it okay for them to not like me, but the last thing I grew up as was rich.

The world is very different now. For man holds in his mortal hands the power to abolish all forms of human poverty, and all forms of human life.

The eye sees what it brings the power to see.

Where sense is wanting, everything is wanting.

In each soul, God loves and partly saves the whole world which that soul sums up in an incommunicable and particular way.

Old men are dangerous: it doesn’t matter to them what is going to happen to the world.

No great artist ever sees things as they really are. If he did, he would cease to be an artist.

The eternal silence of these infinite spaces frightens me.

When the mind is empty, silent, when it is in a state of complete negation – which is not blankness, nor the opposite of being positive, but a totally different state in which all thought has ceased – only then is it possible for that which is unnameable to come into being.

Memory is the way we keep telling ourselves our stories – and telling other people a somewhat different version of our stories.

Silence is argument carried out by other means.

It is far harder to kill a phantom than a reality.

We have got to change our ethics and our financial system and our whole way of understanding the world. It has to be a world in which people live rather than die; a sustainable world. It could be great.

In my songs, I’m not saying something that’s never been said before. The have lyrics aren’t going to blow people away. It’s the emotion and the melody that drive it home.

Wisdom stands at the turn in the road and calls upon us publicly, but we consider it false and despise its adherents.

To be sure I must; and therefore I may assume that your silence gives consent.

I usually write lyrics first, and then when I get home or close to any kind of instrument, I usually make a melody for those lyrics.

Each generation imagines itself to be more intelligent than the one that went before it, and wiser than the one that comes after it.

All the top players in the world play 45-50-60 games. You need that many games, even the strikers need that many games.

We run carelessly to the precipice, after we have put something before us to prevent us seeing it.

My age is very insignificant to me. I don’t think about it, but the world does. The world likes young people in general.

He who does not understand your silence will probably not understand your words.

I used to – my earliest memory of waking up with a melody in my head was, you know, 8, 9, 10. I’ve always heard kind of melodies in my head.

Some folks look at me and see a certain swagger, which in Texas is called ‚walking.‘

It’s really easy to have a nice philosophy about openness, but moving the world in that direction is a different thing. It requires both understanding where you want to go and being pragmatic about getting there.

Sometimes the heart sees what is invisible to the eye.

Time is an illusion. Lunchtime doubly so.

Silence is a true friend who never betrays.

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.

A poet never takes notes. You never take notes in a love affair.

The advice that is wanted is commonly not welcome and that which is not wanted, evidently an effrontery.

Sing me a new song; the world is transfigured; all the Heavens are rejoicing.

Lies are sufficient to breed opinion, and opinion brings on substance.

Let us be silent, that we may hear the whispers of the gods.

As a rule, men worry more about what they can’t see than about what they can.

We never fully grasp the import of any true statement until we have a clear notion of what the opposite untrue statement would be.

If you read history you will find that the Christians who did most for the present world were precisely those who thought most of the next. It is since Christians have largely ceased to think of the other world that they have become so ineffective in this.

Memory is deceptive because it is colored by today’s events.

See things from the boy’s point of view.

Is it not important to find out how to listen not only to what is being said but to everything – to the noise in the streets, to the chatter of birds, to the noise of the tramcar, to the restless sea, to the voice of your husband, to your wife, to your friends, to the cry of a baby?

We’re going to have the best-educated American people in the world.

The eyes of others our prisons; their thoughts our cages.

Common Sense is that which judges the things given to it by other senses.

We inhabit a universe that is characterized by diversity.

The empty vessel makes the loudest sound.

Every fact is related on one side to sensation, and, on the other, to morals. The game of thought is, on the appearance of one of these two sides, to find the other: given the upper, to find the under side.

I am the astronaut of boxing. Joe Louis and Dempsey were just jet pilots. I’m in a world of my own.

The companies that work are the ones that people really care about and have a vision for the world so do something you like.

There is an optical illusion about every person we meet.