You have to listen very carefully and tell the truth if you are going to get a paranoid person to open up to you.

Unlike some politicians, I can admit to a mistake.

It is hardly an exaggeration to say that oral teachers and sign teachers found it difficult to sit down in the same room without quarreling, and there was intolerance upon both sides. To say ‚oral method‘ to a sign teacher was like waving a red flag in the face of a bull, and to say ‚sign language‘ to an oralist aroused the deepest resentment.

Where fear is, happiness is not.

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.‘

Brevity is a great charm of eloquence.

I can get where some scientists would say comedians are crazy. What you have to understand: A lot of comedians are dealing with a dark passion. A lot of these are guys coming from a tumultuous life, including myself. Some people need outlets, a way to express yourself.

For many people who are so lost in their minds, so much involved in their thought processes, the only moments they have when they are not trapped in that is when they are relating to their animal, their pet.

I am who I am and I say what I think. I’m not putting a face on for the record.

He that hath knowledge spareth his words.

After the 9/11 apocalypse happened in New York City, people, particularly New Yorkers, who breathed in the ash, or saw the results of that, have a tendency to keep seeing echoes and having flashbacks to it.

I’ve 20,000 hours of clinical practice; you’re not naive after the first few thousand. I’ve helped people deal with things that most people can’t imagine.

Basketball is my passion, I love it. But my family and friends mean everything to me. That’s what’s important. I need my phone so I can keep in contact with them at all times.

The greatest remedy for anger is delay.

Anxiety does not empty tomorrow of its sorrows, but only empties today of its strength.

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

You don’t always have to be doing something. You can just be, and that’s plenty.

No man should be in politics unless he would honestly rather not be there.

Mirth is like a flash of lightning, that breaks through a gloom of clouds, and glitters for a moment; cheerfulness keeps up a kind of daylight in the mind, and fills it with a steady and perpetual serenity.

Unlike grown ups, children have little need to deceive themselves.

Some people talk in their sleep. Lecturers talk while other people sleep.

It opens the lungs, washes the countenance, exercises the eyes, and softens down the temper; so cry away.

The influence of a mother upon the lives of her children cannot be measured. They know and absorb her example and attitudes when it comes to questions of honesty, temperance, kindness, and industry.

One has to secrete a jelly in which to slip quotations down people’s throats – and one always secretes too much jelly.

Drunkenness is temporary suicide.

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

If you do not wish a man to do a thing, you had better get him to talk about it; for the more men talk, the more likely they are to do nothing else.

I’ll never tell a lie. I’ll never make a misleading statement. I’ll never betray the confidence that any of you had in me. And I’ll never avoid a controversial issue.

Hatred is inveterate anger.

The thing about hip-hop today is it’s smart, it’s insightful. The way they can communicate a complex message in a very short space is remarkable.

An idea, like a ghost, must be spoken to a little before it will explain itself.

Speak the truth, and all things alive or brute are vouchers, and the very roots of the grass underground there, do seem to stir and move to bear you witness.

The story with anorexic girls – nobody works with anorexic girls. That has nothing to do with fashion.

I write songs that are like diary entries. I have to do it in order to feel sane.

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

No one can be happy who has been thrust outside the pale of truth. And there are two ways that one can be removed from this realm: by lying, or by being lied to.

I grew up cursing a lot. It felt natural. My parents told me to stop.

I have owed you this letter for a very long time-but my fingers have avoided the pencil as though it were an old and poisoned tool.

I don’t know about you, but most of my exchanges with cashiers are not that meaningful.

I just think it’s so important not to take yourself too seriously.

If it is not right do not do it; if it is not true do not say it.

We must distinguish between speaking to deceive and being silent to be reserved.

I meet people overseas that know five languages – that the only language I’m comfortable in is English.

People don’t realise how difficult it is to work with people day in and day out that know absolutely nothing.

All knowledge which ends in words will die as quickly as it came to life, with the exception of the written word: which is its mechanical part.

I suppose my best attribute, if you want to call it that, is sincerity. I can sell sincerity because that’s the way I am.

The honest poor can sometimes forget poverty. The honest rich can never forget it.

The problem with having a sense of humor is often that people you use it on aren’t in a very good mood.

What some call health, if purchased by perpetual anxiety about diet, isn’t much better than tedious disease.

I have lost my mental faculties but am perfectly well.

A person hears only what they understand.

I can be a cruel person.

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.

The Catholic and the Communist are alike in assuming that an opponent cannot be both honest and intelligent.

I soothe my conscience now with the thought that it is better for hard words to be on paper than that Mummy should carry them in her heart.

Many people aren’t rich because they’re liars.

Lying is not only saying what isn’t true. It is also, in fact especially, saying more than is true and, in the case of the human heart, saying more than one feels. We all do it, every day, to make life simpler.

Forgive me my nonsense, as I also forgive the nonsense of those that think they talk sense.

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.

I don’t have many sad days.

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