Words mean more than what is set down on paper. It takes the human voice to infuse them with deeper meaning.

It’s a very good question, very direct, and I’m not going to answer it.

Great nations write their autobiographies in three manuscripts – the book of their deeds, the book of their words and the book of their art.

What is history but a fable agreed upon?

Put it this way: If I asked, ‚How’s business?‘ and you say, ‚Boomin‘ or ‚Amazing,‘ I already know the answer.

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

I never did give anybody hell. I just told the truth and they thought it was hell.

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

Well, the thing that I learned as a diplomat is that human relations ultimately make a huge difference.

If you want peace, you don’t talk to your friends. You talk to your enemies.

I think a lot of people, including me, clammed up when a civilian asked about battle, about war. It was fashionable. One of the most impressive ways to tell your war story is to refuse to tell it, you know. Civilians would then have to imagine all kinds of deeds of derring-do.

The devil can cite Scripture for his purpose.

Whenever a husband and wife begin to discuss their marriage they are giving evidence at a coroner’s inquest.

The most important things are the hardest things to say. They are the things you get ashamed of because words diminish your feelings – words shrink things that seem timeless when they are in your head to no more than living size when they are brought out.

Please don’t ask me to do that which I’ve just said I’m not going to do, because you’re burning up time. The meter is running through the sand on you, and I am now filibustering.

I feel like I was writing as I was learning to talk. Writing was always a go-to form of communication. And I knew I could sing from being in tune with the radio.

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

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.‘

If you can speak what you will never hear, if you can write what you will never read, you have done rare things.

By giving people the power to share, we’re making the world more transparent.

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

Words are also actions, and actions are a kind of words.

Coffee is a language in itself.

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.

I don’t mind how much my Ministers talk, so long as they do what I say.

I have found the best way to give advice to your children is to find out what they want and then advise them to do it.

It’s tough to negotiate from a position of weakness.

Happy is the hearing man; unhappy the speaking man.

I have my own vocabulary. I love linguistics. That surprises people.

I have found that no exertion of the legs can bring two minds much nearer to one another.

A gentleman would be ashamed should his deeds not match his words.

I meant what I said and I said what I meant.

What women need to understand is that men don’t communicate. It’s not intentional or on purpose. We’re just not as emotional. You ladies feel like you have to express yourselves.

If Jesus were here today, he wouldn’t be riding around on a donkey. He’d be taking a plane, he’d be using the media.

Something unpleasant is coming when men are anxious to tell the truth.

Preachers in pulpits talked about what a great message is in the book. No matter what you do, somebody always imputes meaning into your books.

Every once in a while, you let a word or phrase out and you want to catch it and bring it back. You can’t do that. It’s gone, gone forever.

The PC has improved the world in just about every area you can think of. Amazing developments in communications, collaboration and efficiencies. New kinds of entertainment and social media. Access to information and the ability to give a voice people who would never have been heard.

The essence of lying is in deception, not in words.

No story is the same to us after a lapse of time; or rather we who read it are no longer the same interpreters.

What makes you a SEAL, what makes you a SEAL is being a good tactician on the battle field, understanding how to shoot, move, and communicate, knowing small unit maneuver warfare. That’s what makes a good SEAL, and so that is the course of instruction that I taught, was getting SEAL platoons ready for deployments to Iraq and Afghanistan.

The common thread for everything I do is this idea of a Web-services architecture. What does that mean? It means taking components of software and systems and having them be self-describing, so that you can aim them, ask them what their capabilities are, and communicate with them using a standard protocol.

The instruction we find in books is like fire. We fetch it from our neighbours, kindle it at home, communicate it to others, and it becomes the property of all.

I prefer tongue-tied knowledge to ignorant loquacity.

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

I entirely concur in the propriety of resorting to the sense in which the Constitution was accepted and ratified by the nation. In that sense alone it is the legitimate Constitution.

There’s nothing hippie about my picture of Christ. The Gospels paint a picture of a very demanding, sometimes divisive love, but love it is.

I guess every single word I’ve ever said is going to be dissected now.

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

I have already demonstrated, by crucial tests, the practicability of signaling by my system from one to any other point of the globe, no matter how remote, and I shall soon convert the disbelievers.

I wanted to be a doctor that I might be able to work without having to talk because for years I had been giving myself out in words.

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

If I’ve got a problem with one of my clients that needs to get solved, guess what I’m going to do? I’m going to call them up, and I’m going to say, ‚Hey, here’s what’s going on. This is the situation. This thing went sideways. I didn’t expect it. Now it’s going to take me some more time to get you what you need.‘ But I’m going to do that upfront.

We cannot learn from one another until we stop shouting at one another – until we speak quietly enough so that our words can be heard as well as our voices.

When I was a young man, Dirac was my hero. He made a breakthrough, a new method of doing physics. He had the courage to simply guess at the form of an equation, the equation we now call the Dirac equation, and to try to interpret it afterwards.

All art is at once surface and symbol. Those who go beneath the surface do so at their peril. Those who read the symbol do so at their peril. It is the spectator, and not life, that art really mirrors. Diversity of opinion about a work of art shows that the work is new, complex and vital.

Be not a slave of words.

When you have a conflict, that means that there are truths that have to be addressed on each side of the conflict. And when you have a conflict, then it’s an educational process to try to resolve the conflict. And to resolve that, you have to get people on both sides of the conflict involved so that they can dialogue.

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.

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

When a politician uses the word ‚folks,‘ we should brace ourselves for the deceit, or worse, that is coming.