There are a lot of self-imposed restrictions by people who somehow believe they have to fall in with a certain military cant. There was always a sense that we had to put things into words that would touch our troops‘ hearts, not just their heads.

I’m a people pleaser. I hold a lot of things in. I’m always making sure everybody is okay. I usually don’t rage; I usually don’t curse.

It’s human nature to not say everything that’s on your mind at the time you think it. Because we fear saying something that people will laugh at, people will think is dumb. We’re afraid of being embarrassed.

The only way I hear gossip is if it’s big enough and loud enough for my friends to bring it up to me. Or if it’s, like, a big untrue ordeal from my publicist – and she hates making that phone call!

The finest language is mostly made up of simple unimposing words.

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

We don’t need to share the same opinions as others, but we need to be respectful.

To conceal anything from those to whom I am attached, is not in my nature. I can never close my lips where I have opened my heart.

In this experiment, made on the 9th of October, 1876, actual conversation, backwards and forwards, upon the same line, and by the same instruments reciprocally used, was successfully carried on for the first time upon a real line of miles in length.

A man’s face as a rule says more, and more interesting things, than his mouth, for it is a compendium of everything his mouth will ever say, in that it is the monogram of all this man’s thoughts and aspirations.

In all matters of opinion, our adversaries are insane.

When I say ‚Crush your enemy‘, I don’t literally mean it.

I feel, as a songwriter, it’s one of the hardest things to do – to sit down and say how you feel.

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.‘

Speech is human, silence is divine, yet also brutish and dead: therefore we must learn both arts.

People often think I’m a faker, but I’m usually honest, in a certain way – in such a way that often nobody believes me!

To find out your real opinion of someone, judge the impression you have when you first see a letter from them.

If you’re really satisfied with your position on something, you just say, ‚Hey;‘ you just very calmly present something.

There are really two core principles at play here. There’s giving people a voice so that people can express their opinions. Then, there’s keeping the community safe, which I think is really important. We’re not gonna let people plan violence or attack each other or do bad things.

Normally, when someone we love is turning away from a struggle, we self-protect by also turning away. That’s definitely my first response. I think change is more likely to happen if both partners have common language and a shared lens to see problems.

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

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.

I have an answering machine in my car. It says, I’m home now. But leave a message and I’ll call when I’m out.

Marriage is a series of desperate arguments people feel passionately about.

I never saw a contradiction between the ideas that sustain me and the ideas of that symbol, of that extraordinary figure, Jesus Christ.

The drawing teacher has this problem of communicating how to draw by osmosis and not by instruction, while the physics teacher has the problem of always teaching techniques, rather than the spirit, of how to go about solving physical problems.

One of my direct subordinates, one of my guys that worked for me, he would call me up or pull me aside with some major problem, some issue that was going on. And he’d say, ‚Boss, we’ve got this, and that, and the other thing.‘ And I’d look at him and I’d say, ‚Good.‘

It’s never happened in history that every region in the world could affect every other region simultaneously. The Roman empire and the Chinese empire didn’t know much about each other and had no means of interacting. Now we have every continent able to reach every other.

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.

I tend to believe that audiences are relatively well-balanced people.

The problem of evil, that is to say the reconciling of our failures, even the purely physical ones, with creative goodness and creative power, will always remain one of the most disturbing mysteries of the universe for both our hearts and our minds.

Behavior is what a man does, not what he thinks, feels, or believes.

All slang is metaphor, and all metaphor is poetry.

Honest disagreement is often a good sign of progress.

A minute of thought is greater than an hour of talk.

I have learned that as long as I hold fast to my beliefs and values – and follow my own moral compass – then the only expectations I need to live up to are my own.

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

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

We shall never be able to remove suspicion and fear as potential causes of war until communication is permitted to flow, free and open, across international boundaries.

A letter does not blush.

I do not think I could myself be brought to support a man for office whom I knew to be an open enemy of, and scoffer at, religion.

Sometimes one creates a dynamic impression by saying something, and sometimes one creates as significant an impression by remaining silent.

I can unload my opinion on anybody at anytime.

Sometimes I wonder if we shall ever grow up in our politics and say definite things which mean something, or whether we shall always go on using generalities to which everyone can subscribe, and which mean very little.

Every age has its own poetry; in every age the circumstances of history choose a nation, a race, a class to take up the torch by creating situations that can be expressed or transcended only through poetry.

I maintain that, if everyone knew what others said about him, there would not be four friends in the world.

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

I don’t like to talk much with people who always agree with me. It is amusing to coquette with an echo for a little while, but one soon tires of it.

I never went to school more than six months in my life, but I can say this: that among my earliest recollections, I remember how, when a mere child, I used to get irritated when anybody talked to me in a way I could not understand.

We’ve fallen into a trap of ever-widening orbits of contact, and there is a total disregard for the present moment.

If you can’t hear me, it’s because I’m in parentheses.

It is in this power of saying everything, and yet saying nothing too plainly, that the perfection of art consists.

I had to resign myself, many years ago, that I’m not too articulate when it comes to explaining how I feel about things. But my music does it for me, it really does.

Both times I was in India, I could not get people to listen to each other. I had to literally tell people to listen to each other and tell them that they can’t get creative and find alternate solutions if they don’t listen to each other. There’s a lot of arguing and justifying.

If a word in the dictionary were misspelled, how would we know?

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

The more you know the less you need to say.

I can easily imagine Obama sitting down and talking to any leader – or any person – in the world, with no baggage of past servitude or race supremacy to mar their talks.

I think one of the basic reasons men make good friends is that they can make up their minds quickly.

Convictions are more dangerous foes of truth than lies.

What convinces is conviction. Believe in the argument you’re advancing. If you don’t you’re as good as dead. The other person will sense that something isn’t there, and no chain of reasoning, no matter how logical or elegant or brilliant, will win your case for you.