We have language and they do not. Chimps communicate by embracing, patting, looking – all these things. And they have lots of sounds. But they cannot sit and discuss. They cannot teach about things that are not present, as far as we know.

When dealing with people, remember you are not dealing with creatures of logic, but creatures of emotion.

Music helps me tell my story. That’s where I can really be heard. But there’s so much focus on the things that aren’t music.

The bulk of the universities are about teaching kids.

I wish I could shut up, but I can’t, and I won’t.

It is good to express a thing twice right at the outset and so to give it a right foot and also a left one. Truth can surely stand on one leg, but with two it will be able to walk and get around.

I remain convinced that obstinate addiction to ordinary language in our private thoughts is one of the main obstacles to progress in philosophy.

Often, I can scarcely hear any one speaking to me; the tones yes, but not the actual words; yet as soon as any one shouts, it is unbearable. What will come of all this, heaven only knows!

If you go back a few hundred years, what we take for granted today would seem like magic – being able to talk to people over long distances, to transmit images, flying, accessing vast amounts of data like an oracle. These are all things that would have been considered magic a few hundred years ago.

In the last analysis, what we are communicates far more eloquently than anything we say or do.

I am a writer of books in retrospect. I talk in order to understand; I teach in order to learn.

I think some of my colleagues‘ spicier lines are distracting. They draw attention away from what the justice is trying to say.

I tended to place my wife under a pedestal.

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

Humor is the first of the gifts to perish in a foreign tongue.

I’d like to think I’m a great teacher.

The superior man acts before he speaks, and afterwards speaks according to his action.

Early on, when I was quite young and going from job to job, I was foolish enough to sometimes speak to my fellow workers: ‚Hey, the boss can come in here at any moment and lay all of us off, just like that, don’t you realize that?‘ They would just look at me. I was posing something that they didn’t want to enter their minds.

I particularly like Twitter, because it’s short and can be very funny and informative. It’s a little bit like having your own radio program.

Back, you know, a few generations ago, people didn’t have a way to share information and express their opinions efficiently to a lot of people. But now they do. Right now, with social networks and other tools on the Internet, all of these 500 million people have a way to say what they’re thinking and have their voice be heard.

I’m actually a very honest person, and sometimes I end up like, ‚Man, I said too much.‘ It’s hard for me not to tell the truth when you ask me.

My mother taught children to love to dance.

This administration is going to be cussed and discussed for years to come.

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.

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

There is no greater index of character so sure as the voice.

When the people we love stop paying attention, trust begins to slip away and hurt starts seeping in.

Women tend to be more intuitive, or to admit to being intuitive, and maybe the hard science approach isn’t so attractive. The way that science is taught is very cold. I would never have become a scientist if I had been taught like that.

Nothing is so unbelievable that oratory cannot make it acceptable.

Money has a language of its own.

Action speaks louder than words but not nearly as often.

Human language appears to be a unique phenomenon, without significant analogue in the animal world.

If I have the chance to say something, I will say it – but that doesn’t obligate me to always say something, or to shed light on every problem, as if I were a lawmaker.

Me is a common sense man. That mean when me explain things, me explain it in a very simple way; that mean if I explain it to a baby, the baby will understand too, you know.

Persuasion is clearly a sort of demonstration, since we are most fully persuaded when we consider a thing to have been demonstrated.

It may be the part of a friend to rebuke a friend’s folly.

If we accept being talked to any kind of a way, then we are telling ourselves we are not quite worth the best. And if we have the effrontery to talk to anybody with less than courtesy, we tell ourselves and the world we are not very intelligent.

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

Repartee is something we think of twenty-four hours too late.

By and large, language is a tool for concealing the truth.

Humor must not professedly teach and it must not professedly preach, but it must do both if it would live forever.

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.

People use irony as a defense mechanism.

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

You learn a lot about someone when you share a meal together.

He who talks more is sooner exhausted.

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.

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

As soon as you have a language that has a past tense and a future tense you’re going to say, ‚Where did we come from, what happens next?‘ The ability to remember the past helps us plan the future.

Immigration laws are the only laws that are discussed in terms of how to help people who break them.

I can’t very well be teaching one way and living my life another way. What I do in life must be consistent with the things I say. And the same goes for you.

We are masters of the unsaid words, but slaves of those we let slip out.

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 there ought to be some serious discussion by smart people, really smart people, about whether or not proliferation of things like The Smoking Gun and TMZ and YouTube and the whole celebrity culture is healthy.

I don’t know why you use a fancy French word like detente when there’s a good English phrase for it – cold war.

The world would be happier if men had the same capacity to be silent that they have to speak.

The secret of being a bore… is to tell everything.

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.

All slang is metaphor, and all metaphor is poetry.

When a thoughtless or unkind word is spoken, best tune out.

I’ll think I have a few wonderful friends and all of a sudden, ooh, here it comes. They do a lot of things. They talk about you to the press, to their friends, tell stories, and you know, it’s disappointing.