There are always three speeches, for every one you actually gave. The one you practiced, the one you gave, and the one you wish you gave.

Tell the children the truth.

I got this powdered water – now I don’t know what to add.

Let us ask ourselves, ‚What kind of people do we think we are?‘ And let us answer, ‚Free people, worthy of freedom and determined not only to remain so but to help others gain their freedom as well.‘

For years I wanted to be older, and now I am.

My wife and I tried two or three times in the last 40 years to have breakfast together, but it was so disagreeable we had to stop.

Sometimes your joy is the source of your smile, but sometimes your smile can be the source of your joy.

Let us make a special effort to stop communicating with each other, so we can have some conversation.

If every day you practice walking and sitting meditation and generate the energy of mindfulness and concentration and peace, you are a cell in the body of the new Buddha. This is not a dream but is possible today and tomorrow.

If I could explain it to the average person, it wouldn’t have been worth the Nobel Prize.

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 undertake the same project as Montaigne, but with an aim contrary to his own: for he wrote his Essays only for others, and I write my reveries only for myself.

Talk well of the absent whenever you have the opportunity.

No man is hurt but by himself.

The Public is merely a multiplied ‚me.‘

I try not to think about my life. I have no life. I need therapy.

The people in my songs are all me.

What a wee little part of a person’s life are his acts and his words! His real life is led in his head, and is known to none but himself.

I would like to be remembered as someone who did the best she could with the talent she had.

Your life is like a play with several acts. Some of the characters who enter have short roles to play, others, much larger. Some are villains and others are good guys. But all of them are necessary; otherwise, they wouldn’t be in the play. Embrace them all, and move on to the next act.

People make suggestions on what to say all the time. I’ll give you an example; I don’t read what’s handed to me. People say, ‚Here, here’s your speech, or here’s an idea for a speech.‘ They’re changed. Trust me.

Part of what confuses people in times of upheaval is that you’re getting so many different points of view and directions and so and so, how to do this and do that. And a lot of it is written in a language that honestly most people cannot understand.

Always first draw fresh breath after outbursts of vanity and complacency.

Unless I am both capable of and willing to reopen the wound every time I write a song, if I choose to not look inside myself to write music, I’m really not worth being called an artist at all.

In honorable dealing you should consider what you intended, not what you said or thought.

Guilt: the gift that keeps on giving.

If you’re talking to a man who wouldn’t fight with you under any circumstances whatsoever, then you’re talking to someone for whom you have absolutely no respect.

Before I can live with other folks I’ve got to live with myself. The one thing that doesn’t abide by majority rule is a person’s conscience.

It is not, of course, complete yet – but some sentences were understood this afternoon… I feel that I have at last struck the solution of a great problem – and the day is coming when telegraph wires will be laid onto houses just like water or gas – and friends converse with each other without leaving home.

I used to stutter really badly. Everybody thinks it’s funny. And it’s not funny. It’s not.

A letter does not blush.

When words are scarce they are seldom spent in vain.

You can’t talk your way out of problems you behave yourself into.

I’m not really good at fun-to-know, human interest stuff. We’re not ‚celebrities‘, whose life itself is a performance. Good or bad or ugly, we are our words. They’re what people meet.

I have to be in tune. All the time. I have to be in tune with my husband, where he is, how he’s feeling. I have to be in tune with where my family is.

God made the Idiot for practice, and then He made the School Board.

The most dangerous word in any human tongue is the word for brother. It’s inflammatory.

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.

Do you wish people to think well of you? Don’t speak well of yourself.

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

Will not a tiny speck very close to our vision blot out the glory of the world, and leave only a margin by which we see the blot? I know no speck so troublesome as self.

Meditation is a vital practice to access conscious contact with your highest self.

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 never gave anybody hell! I just told the truth and they thought it was hell.

Broadly speaking, the short words are the best, and the old words best of all.

Did you know there’s a difference between being busy and being fruitful? Did you ever stop to think that just being busy – running around in circles all day but not accomplishing anything – is the same as wasting your time? It’s frustrating to expend so much energy and time and not have any fruit from your effort!

Never take a wife till thou hast a house (and a fire) to put her in.

So live with men as if God saw you and speak to God, as if men heard you.

I have trouble imagining what I could do that’s beyond the practicality of what I can do.

There is only one thing in life worse than being talked about, and that is not being talked about.

I talk about myself in the third person all the time. I don’t live my life in the way someone like you does. I live my life completely serving only my work and my fans.

When I had to make a decision whether or not an activity was appropriate for the Sabbath, I simply asked myself, ‚What sign do I want to give to God?‘ That question made my choices about the Sabbath day crystal clear.

It is a bit embarrassing to have been concerned with the human problem all one’s life and find at the end that one has no more to offer by way of advice than ‚try to be a little kinder.‘

Everybody should do at least two things each day that he hates to do, just for practice.

People don’t usually compliment your character.

One might say that our words are a movie screen that reveals what we have been thinking and the attitudes we have.

It’s a fact that more people watch television and get their information that way than read books. I find new technology and new ways of communication very exciting and would like to do more in this field.

It’s hard to be clear about who you are when you are carrying around a bunch of baggage from the past. I’ve learned to let go and move more quickly into the next place.

I fear not the man who has practiced 10,000 kicks once, but I fear the man who has practiced one kick 10,000 times.

Sometimes when you take strong stands, if you’re not called to do it, you’re dividing the audience you’re trying to reach.

I don’t write the books. God writes the books and delivers the speeches.