If you can’t explain it simply, you don’t understand it well enough.

The most important thing in communication is hearing what isn’t said.

Whatever words we utter should be chosen with care, for people will hear them and be influenced by them for good or ill.

The pen is the tongue of the mind.

Communication - the human connection - is the key to personal and career success.

The ability to simplify means to eliminate the unnecessary, so that the necessary may speak.

Take advantage of every opportunity to practice your communication skills so that when important occasions arise, you will have the gift, the style, the sharpness, the clarity, and the emotions to affect other people.

Most people have to talk so they won’t hear.

Communication is a skill that you can learn. It’s like riding a bicycle or typing. If you’re willing to work at it, you can rapidly improve the quality of every part of your life.

Good words are worth much, and cost little.

The more elaborate our means of communication, the less we communicate.

Proper words in proper places make the true definition of a style.

First learn the meaning of what you say, and then speak.

Effective communication is 20 percent what you know and 80 percent how you feel about what you know.

There is only one rule for being a good talker--learn to listen.

Half the world is composed of people who have something to say and can’t, and the other half who have nothing to say and keep on saying it.

To listen well is as powerful a means of communication and influence as to talk well.

It’s much easier to be convincing if you care about your topic. Figure out what’s important to you about your message and speak from the heart.

Don’t use words too big for the subject. Don’t say infinitely when you mean very; otherwise you’ll have no word left when you want to talk about something really infinite.

Write to be understood, speak to be heard, read to grow.

We speak not only to tell other people what we think, but to tell ourselves what we think. Speech is a part of thought.

It's important to make sure that we're talking with each other in a way that heals, not in a way that wounds.

Most of the time, communication gets confused with conversation. In fact, the two are distinctly different.

Your words will either give you joy or give you sorrow, but if they were spoken without regret, they give you peace.

To effectively communicate, we must realize that we are all different in the way we perceive the world and use this understanding as a guide to our communication with others.

Eloquence is the power to translate a truth into language perfectly intelligible to the person to whom you speak.

The great gift of family life is to be intimately acquainted with people you might never even introduce yourself to had life not done it for you.

Amazon has historically been a bully, and I don't shop there. But I love Goodreads. For the record.

Billionaires like the Koch brothers, casino mogul Sheldon Adelson, and political puppet master Karl Rove should not be able to buy our elections. Secret money should not be able to drown out the voices of the American people and sell our Democracy to the highest bidder.

I did telemarketing for years, starting at the age of 16, just selling steak knives to old people. Old people go through a weird amount of steak knives. I also sold straight meat over the telephone.

I started acting when I was 13 in New York. Worked there for a couple years, then auditioned for a show there that was going to be filming here. Ended up coming out, getting the job and just staying.

In music, you feel a connection to the voice and think about the person behind it. In art that's secondary.

I hate sunshine so much. I can only cope with it when it's bitterly, bitterly cold.

If you desire to drain to the dregs the fullest cup of scorn and hatred that a fellow human being can pour out for you, let a young mother hear you call dear baby 'it.'

I didn't like Los Angeles very much but I like San Francisco.

I make music to bring the dead to life for a couple minutes and then let it go.

I've done quite a few big American films.

Twitter makes me feel like I have friends all over.

I was a big Jay Leno fan, so I was sorry to see him go. But my number one person that I watch, she's not late night, but in terms of the comedian genre, is Ellen DeGeneres - love her.

Back when I was jamming with Axl and the guys they had boxes of cassettes with song ideas. How do you know which ones you like now when you have that many ideas.

I blame the Russians for a lot, but pinning the creation of ISIS on them is a murky, tenuous, triple-carom bank shot at best.

There's nothing more human than two people making love.

I have completed 43 years in politics and have been a minister of state, chief minister, and a Cabinet minister. A person who survives so many years is bound to face some attacks. It doesn't affect me because I know the truth.

Unlike Etsy, which is all handmade, we print and ship the products, not the designers. We relieve the designer from having to make and ship everything, package it, and provide customer service. All the designer has to do is submit art and keep doing what they love doing.

If someone says, hey, you know, this long weekend, let's go skydiving - I would say, no, are you nuts? I'd just as soon sit down and have a cup of tea.

Wage concessions are difficult to quantify, since their magnitude depends on many operating variables.

Do you know what would hold me together on a battlefield? The sense that I was perpetuating the language in which Keats and the rest of them wrote!

I don't know if I believe in luck. I think I'm very fortunate.

Criticising the other fellow because he's in and you are not seems to me a futile waste of time.