But rule number one, in my book, is: Stop listening to professionals!

"So nobody must be allowed to think at all. Down with the public schools! Children must be drilled mentally by quarter-educated herdsmen, whose wages would stop at the first sign of disagreement with the bosses. For the rest, deafen the whole world with senseless clamour. Mechanize everything! Give nobody a chance to think. Standardize "amusement." The louder and more cacophonous, the better! Brief intervals between one din and the next can be filled with appeals, repeated 'till hypnotic power gives them the force of orders, to buy this or that product of the "Business men" who are the real power in the State. Men who betray their country as obvious routine.

The history of the past thirty years is eloquent enough, one would think. What these sodden imbeciles never realize is that a living organism must adapt itself intelligently to its environment, or go under at the first serious change of circumstance."

It is greed to do all the talking but not to want to listen at all.

Gossip [is] the Devil's radio: Don't be a broadcaster.

Today's public figures can no longer write their own speeches or books, and there is some evidence that they can't read them either.

Do not proffer sympathy to the mentally ill; it is a bottomless pit. Tell them firmly, “I am not paid to listen to this drivel — you are a terminal fool!” Otherwise, they make you as crazy as they are.

Gentlemen of the human race, I say to hell with the lot of you.

Listening to uninformed people is worse than having no answers at all.

When a thoughtless or unkind word is spoken,best tune out.

There were a lot of fools at that conference — pompous fools — and pompous fools drive me up the wall. Ordinary fools are all right; you can talk to them, and try to help them out. But pompous fools — guys who are fools and are covering it all over and impressing people as to how wonderful they are with all this hocus pocus — THAT, I CANNOT STAND!

When a thoughtless or unkind word is spoken, best tune out. Reacting in anger or annoyance will not advance one’s ability to persuade.

Don't gobblefunk around with words.

The main thing with people of that sort is never to let them think that their information can be of the slightest importance to you. If you do, they will instantly shut up like an oyster. If you listen to them under protest, as it were, you are very likely to get what you want.

I wish people who have trouble communicating would just shut up.