We often refuse to accept an idea merely because the tone of voice in which it has been expressed is unsympathetic to us.

As soon as I hear a sound, it always suggests a mood to me.

Nobody is as powerful as we make them out to be.

When you love and accept yourself, when you know who really cares about you, and when you learn from your mistakes, then you stop caring about what people who don’t know you think.

Be not a slave of words.

There are as many pillows of illusion as flakes in a snow-storm. We wake from one dream into another dream.

The thing that we are trying to do at facebook, is just help people connect and communicate more efficiently.

Men govern nothing with more difficulty than their tongues, and can moderate their desires more than their words.

I wouldn’t put myself forward to do a film like ‚Changeling‘ if I thought I couldn’t pull people into a story because of all the other ways people see me.

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

I don’t have this feeling that 70 is really old.

I don’t have any oratory skills. But I would not use them if I had.

Changing your mind is probably one of the most beautiful things people can do. And I’ve changed my mind about a lot of things over the years.

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.

I’m going to save my public voice largely for the issues where I have some depth.

Friends accept you the way you are.

What is earnest is not always true; on the contrary, error is often more earnest than truth.

Talk that does not end in any kind of action is better suppressed altogether.

People tried to change my concept of what music is. That music is work, but it’s not like that.

Take things as they are. Punch when you have to punch. Kick when you have to kick.

If you want to know your true opinion of someone, watch the effect produced in you by the first sight of a letter from him.

In memory everything seems to happen to music.

Words, words, words! They shut one off from the universe. Three quarters of the time one’s never in contact with things, only with the beastly words that stand for them.

I was terrible in English. I couldn’t stand the subject. It seemed to me ridiculous to worry about whether you spelled something wrong or not, because English spelling is just a human convention – it has nothing to do with anything real, anything from nature.

It is the heart which perceives God and not the reason. That is what faith is: God perceived by the heart, not by the reason.

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

A man never tells you anything until you contradict him.

I’m not looking to exclude people, I’m looking to include them.

I realized why directors are such horrible people – in a way – because you want things to be right, and people will just not listen to you, and there is no time to be nice to people, no time to be delicate.

An intellectual says a simple thing in a hard way. An artist says a hard thing in a simple way.

To a guy like me, a laugh is full of information.

Game’s always been open arms with me.

The issues a president faces are not black and white, and cannot be boiled down into 140 characters. Because when you have the nuclear codes at your fingertips and the military at your command, you can’t make snap decisions. You can’t have a thin skin or the tendency to lash out.

The world moves, and ideas that were once good are not always good.

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.

I prefer tongue-tied knowledge to ignorant loquacity.

Sometimes it’s a form of love just to talk to somebody that you have nothing in common with and still be fascinated by their presence.

There are more things to alarm us than to harm us, and we suffer more often in apprehension than reality.

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.

It is always good to know which ideas cannot be checked directly, but it is not necessary to remove them all. It is not true that we can pursue science completely by using only those concepts which are directly subject to experiment.

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.

When I am getting ready to reason with a man, I spend one-third of my time thinking about myself and what I am going to say and two-thirds about him and what he is going to say.

Ideas excite me, and as soon as I get excited, the adrenaline gets going and the next thing I know I’m borrowing energy from the ideas themselves.

I was called a terrorist yesterday, but when I came out of jail, many people embraced me, including my enemies, and that is what I normally tell other people who say those who are struggling for liberation in their country are terrorists.

There is no such thing as an underestimate of average intelligence.

Faith certainly tells us what the senses do not, but not the contrary of what they see; it is above, not against them.

To jaw-jaw is always better than to war-war.

I get to hear the really good or the really bad things in the press, but I don’t read it. I can afford to say that because public opinion does not drive U2’s audience.

The kids never listen to you, especially the youngest ones.

I can honestly say, after talking about my mom passing away, I got the biggest weight off of my chest. Comedy is my therapy. That’s how I deal with my problems, my personal battles. I talk about it. I give it to my fans. When they laugh at it, it’s a release, for lack of a better word.

People who know little are usually great talkers, while men who know much say little.

I was ill, and everyone could see it but me.

Politics has always been ugly to me, and yet I accept that as a fact of life.

No grand idea was ever born in a conference, but a lot of foolish ideas have died there.

If you’re yelling you’re the one who’s lost control of the conversation.

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

FaceTime helps me a lot. I feel like I’m at home even though I’m not.

I like to speak on matters which matter to human beings, and almost everything matters to human beings.

You can stroke people with words.

Keep in mind that no matter how perfectly you get your life in order, you will never be rid of all your problems. Problems are a way of life, always have been, always will be. But how you elect to view those problems is all up to you.

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