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

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.

That we must all die, we always knew; I wish I had remembered it sooner.

We misjudge risk if we feel we have some control over it, even if it’s an illusory sense of control.

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

I never will, by any word or act, bow to the shrine of intolerance or admit a right of inquiry into the religious opinions of others.

If you have enough people sitting around telling you you’re wonderful, then you start believing you’re fabulous, then someone tells you you stink and you believe that too!

Style is that which indicates how the writer takes himself and what he is saying. It is the mind skating circles around itself as it moves forward.

I prefer tongue-tied knowledge to ignorant loquacity.

To travel is to discover that everyone is wrong about other countries.

When we launched a new company, I reviewed the ads and marketing materials and asked those presenting the campaign to read everything aloud to test the phrasing and concept. If I could grasp it quickly, then it passed with muster. We would get our message across only if it was understandable at first glance.

The true genius shudders at incompleteness – and usually prefers silence to saying something which is not everything it should be.

I just want you to know that, when we talk about war, we’re really talking about peace.

The mouth obeys poorly when the heart murmurs.

If God dropped acid, would he see people?

When I looked at the third base coach, he turned his back on me.

I’m trying to make God more relevant in our society. And I think talking in everyday terms and making sure people can understand it – I think that’s important.

At one time, I was very angry. I even treated fashion like a kind of crusade: you were either with us or against us, that kind of feeling. Now I know we need ideas, not kicking down a door.

In France there are, I think, less than one per cent of people who are too skinny.

Diplomacy is listening to what the other guy needs. Preserving your own position, but listening to the other guy. You have to develop relationships with other people so when the tough times come, you can work together.

Ideas can be life-changing. Sometimes all you need to open the door is just one more good idea.

We do not see people as they are, but as they appear to us. And these appearances are usually misleading.

I do not, in fact, use many puns. Certainly there are far fewer than people believe. But I suspect the ones I do occasionally use tend to hang around in people’s memories for a while.

Eternal nothingness is fine if you happen to be dressed for it.

Money has a language of its own.

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.

I do have a lot of gays in my family now, but some will never come out.

The greatest gift that you can give to others is the gift of unconditional love and acceptance.

The answer I found is you stay away from the people who make fun of you, and you join these ad hoc groups who understand your craziness.

I don’t want enemies. I want friends, and I want them in all shapes, sizes, and colors, and loving whoever they want to.

You accept that this civilisation could be abolished and life will begin later on after a few thousand years because that is something that has happened in the history of this planet. When you have peace in yourself and accept, then you are calm enough to do something, but if you are carried by despair there is no hope.

The ideas associated with the problems of the development of science, as far as I can see by looking around me, are not of the kind that everyone appreciates.

You’ve got to work things out in the cloakroom, and when you’ve got them worked out, you can debate a little before you vote.

Whenever the speech is corrupted so is the mind.

It should be possible to explain the laws of physics to a barmaid.

There’s always a bittersweet kind of thing, but I feel like everything had to work out the way it is. Everything that had to happen, happened.

I want to let you in on a little secret: I don’t always feel like I’m a success. That’s right. There are plenty of times when I feel like I’ve just totally messed up and failed to connect with the people I’m trying to communicate with.

I tended to place my wife under a pedestal.

Maturity is a bitter disappointment for which no remedy exists, unless laughter could be said to remedy anything.

Words can be said in bitterness and anger, and often there seems to be an element of truth in the nastiness. And words don’t go away, they just echo around.

Whether a person is straight or gay, Republican, Democrat, good person, not a good person, they’re all welcome, because to me, church is a place you’re supposed to get healed and whole and loved.

Smiles are the language of love.

I have made this letter longer than usual, only because I have not had the time to make it shorter.

Brevity and conciseness are the parents of correction.

A reader can never tell if it’s a real thimble or an imaginary thimble, because by the time you’re reading it, they’re the same. It’s a thimble. It’s in the book.

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.

Most negotiators are trying to get their way.

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.

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

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

A letter does not blush.

It is time for parents to teach young people early on that in diversity there is beauty and there is strength.

I love trying new things.

When I am talking to people who I feel don’t like me or are mean, I get really shy, and I kind of curl up personality wise.

Assuming if there’s such a thing as reality, if you have a false relationship with it, how can you do anything but fail?

In a magazine, one can get – from cover to cover – 15 to 20 different ideas about life and how to live it.

Above all, this country is our own. Nobody has to get up in the morning and worry what his neighbors think of him. Being a Jew is no problem here.

Using e-mail, I can communicate with scientists all over the world.

I write all of my own speeches.

If all men knew what others say of them, there would not be four friends in the world.

Seeing is not always believing.