These technologies can make life easier, can let us touch people we might not otherwise. You may have a child with a birth defect and be able to get in touch with other parents and support groups, get medical information, the latest experimental drugs. These things can profoundly influence life. I’m not downplaying that.

Children sweeten labours, but they make misfortunes more bitter.

It’s easier to add things on to a PC than it’s ever been before. It’s one click, and boom, it comes down.

Be generous with kindly words, especially about those who are absent.

An inability to handle language is not the same thing as stupidity.

My kids are the funniest two human beings there are.

Such a chimerical idea as telegraphing vocal sounds would indeed, to most minds, seem scarcely feasible enough to spend time in working over. I believe, however, that it is feasible and that I have got the cue to the solution of the problem.

If one does not understand a person, one tends to regard him as a fool.

Never marry someone in hope that they’ll change later.

Once the automobile appeared you could have predicted that it would destroy as many people as it did.

Language is a weapon of politicians, but language is a weapon in much of human affairs.

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.

I don’t do Shakespeare. I don’t talk in that kind of broken English.

People change because of kids. They change how they eat. They change the way they think. They change the way they see one another.

Often, little situations trigger enormous reactions. Be there, present for it. Your partner will find it easier to see it in you, and you will find it easier to see it in them.

Microsoft has had two goals in the last 10 years. One was to copy the Mac, and the other was to copy Lotus‘ success in the spreadsheet – basically, the applications business. And over the course of the last 10 years, Microsoft accomplished both of those goals. And now they are completely lost.

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

It seems that I have always been ahead of my time. I had to wait nineteen years before Niagara was harnessed by my system, fifteen years before the basic inventions for wireless which I gave to the world in 1893 were applied universally.

I make a lot of expressions constantly. I’m animated.

When you really listen to another person from their point of view, and reflect back to them that understanding, it’s like giving them emotional oxygen.

If I’m in a political argument, I think I can, with reasonable accuracy and without boasting, put the other person’s side of the case at least as well as they could. One has to be able to say that in any well-conducted argument.

I mean Facebook is no longer a company, it’s a country. 2 billion users. It can influence what we think, what we believe, how we vote, what we buy, even how we feel.

You might be the funniest guy in the world, but if you don’t have anything to talk about, people are eventually going to gravitate towards the guy that’s actually saying something.

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?

The Internet, man, is a beautiful thing.

If one plays good music, people don’t listen and if one plays bad music people don’t talk.

I thought it was magic to be able to catch something identically on tape and then be able to play around with it, run it backwards; I thought that was great for years.

Happy is the hearing man; unhappy the speaking man.

My parents were the same in the pulpit as they were at home. I think that’s where a lot of preachers‘ kids get off base sometimes. Because they don’t see the same things at both places.

Technology has allowed people to make records really cheap. You can make a record on a laptop.

Disagreement is something normal.

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.

Who hears me, who understands me, becomes mine, a possession for all time.

I do not like broccoli. And I haven’t liked it since I was a little kid and my mother made me eat it. And I’m President of the United States and I’m not going to eat any more broccoli.

If your man is a sports enthusiast, you may have to resign yourself to his spouting off in a monotone on a prize fight, football game or pennant race.

If I have something to say, I want it to be meaningful.

Of course you can’t ‚trust‘ what people tell you on the web anymore than you can ‚trust‘ what people tell you on megaphones, postcards or in restaurants. Working out the social politics of who you can trust and why is, quite literally, what a very large part of our brain has evolved to do.

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.‘

I think – I don’t know, maybe it’s nostalgia. But the choice, losing the choice to be able to use film is going to be – it’s gone. It’s going to be gone.

Of all nature’s gifts to the human race, what is sweeter to a man than his children?

Give thy thoughts no tongue.

If GM had kept up with technology like the computer industry has, we would all be driving $25 cars that got 1,000 MPG.

Every spoken word arouses our self-will.

I prefer tongue-tied knowledge to ignorant loquacity.

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.

Always make those above you feel comfortably superior. In your desire to please or impress them, do not go too far in displaying your talents or you might accomplish the opposite – inspire fear and insecurity.

Men are what their mothers made them.

Extremely religious, legalistic people have a criticism or judgment about everyone and everything. They just have a way of bringing people down with what they say.

In the normal flow of a conversation, our attention is divided. We hear parts of what other people are saying, in order to follow and keep the conversation going. At the same time, we’re planning what we’ll say next, some exciting story of our own.

Foreign policy is like human relations, only people know less about each other.

Let parents bequeath to their children not riches, but the spirit of reverence.

Never speak to an invalid from behind, nor from the door, nor from any distance from him, nor when he is doing anything. The official politeness of servants in these things is so grateful to invalids, that many prefer, without knowing why, having none but servants about them.

When a child is locked in the bathroom with water running and he says he’s doing nothing but the dog is barking, call 911.

My mom was a terrible parent of young children. And thank God – I thank God every time I think of it – I was sent to my paternal grandmother. Ah, but my mother was a great parent of a young adult.

What makes us human, I think, is an ability to ask questions, a consequence of our sophisticated spoken language.

Every aspect of human technology has a dark side, including the bow and arrow.

My son complains about headaches. I tell him all the time, when you get out of bed, it’s feet first!

Much unhappiness has come into the world because of bewilderment and things left unsaid.

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.

There’s something wrong with a mother who washes out a measuring cup with soap and water after she’s only measured water in it.

Advertising works most effectively when it’s in line with what people are already trying to do. And people are trying to communicate in a certain way on Facebook – they share information with their friends, they learn about what their friends are doing – so there’s really a whole new opportunity for a new type of advertising model within that.