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As important as your words are in shaping your behavior, they are even more important in the way they shape the behavior of others. Your manner of speaking is, if nothing else, the central factor upon which people form assumptions about you. Whatever is your ultimate goal in life, chances are good you're going to have to talk your way to it. And if greatness is your goal, well-spoken words are essential. Think about it. From Homer to Hemingway, Lincoln, Churchill, King, and both Obamas - their words are why we know them.

There was a beautiful row. You’ve really scared people, Hoddan! You deserve well of the republic! Every government and every person needs to be thoroughly terrified occasionally. It limbers up the brain.

He irritably suspected himself of a tendency to make enemies unnecessarily.

The hearts of the rich are hardened. The existence of the poor is a reproach to them.

Hoddan angrily suspected fate and chance of plain conspiracy against him.

Again time passed. In one of the remoter galaxies a supernova flamed, and on a rocky, barren world a small living thing squirmed experimentally—and to mankind the one event was just as important as the other.

There are some people so stupid you have to show them everything. I didn’t realize that there are people so stupid you can’t show them anything.

A practical man can always make what he wants to do look like a noble sacrifice of personal inclinations to the welfare of the community.

From the Near Rim to the farthest of occupied systems, planets circled their suns, and men lived on them, and every man took himself seriously and did not quite believe that the universe had existed before he was born or would long survive his loss.

“It isn’t reasonable!” insisted Holmes. “It doesn’t make sense!”

“The question,” observed Burke, “isn’t whether it makes sense, but whether it’s fact.”

They raise the question of whether I’ve been crazy, and am suddenly sane, or whether I’ve been sane up to now, and have suddenly gone crazy.

For once, no eminent figure assumed the undignified pose involved in standing on one’s dignity.