communication quotes

Before I lost my voice, it was slurred, so only those close to me could understand, but with the computer voice, I found I could give popular lectures. I enjoy communicating science. It is important that the public understands basic science, if they are not to leave vital decisions to others.

I learned from my dog long before I went to Gombe that we weren’t the only beings with personalities. What the chimps did was help me to persuade others.

There is only one thing in life worse than being talked about, and that is not being talked about.

If your man is a sports enthusiast, you may have to resign yourself to his spouting off in a monotone on a prize fight, football game or pennant race.

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

Repartee is something we think of twenty-four hours too late.

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.

I think we’re still in a muddle with our language, because once you get words and a spoken language it gets harder to communicate.

Words do not express thoughts very well. They always become a little different immediately after they are expressed, a little distorted, a little foolish.

Information is the oxygen of the modern age. It seeps through the walls topped by barbed wire, it wafts across the electrified borders.

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

He who speaks without modesty will find it difficult to make his words good.

I prefer tongue-tied knowledge to ignorant loquacity.

If I have something to say, I want it to be meaningful.

Knowledge can be communicated, but not wisdom. One can find it, live it, be fortified by it, do wonders through it, but one cannot communicate and teach it.

Those who write clearly have readers, those who write obscurely have commentators.

When our governments want to sell us a course of action, they do it by making sure it’s the only thing on the agenda, the only thing everyone’s talking about. And they pre-load the ensuing discussion with highly selected images, devious and prejudicial language, dubious linkages, weak or false ‚intelligence‘ and selected ‚leaks.‘

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

You’ve got to work things out in the cloakroom, and when you’ve got them worked out, you can debate a little before you vote.

Words are more treacherous and powerful than we think.

He that would live in peace and at ease must not speak all he knows or all he sees.

Honest disagreement is often a good sign of progress.

Anybody can be specific and obvious. That’s always been the easy way. It’s not that it’s so difficult to be unspecific and less obvious; it’s just that there’s nothing, absolutely nothing, to be specific and obvious about.

I know what I do for my team and what my teammates expect of me on both ends of the floor.

Brevity is a great charm of eloquence.

Many parents and teachers have become irritated to the point of distraction at the way the weed-style growth of ‚like‘ has spread through the idiom of the young. And it’s true that in some cases the term has become simultaneously a crutch and a tic, driving out the rest of the vocabulary as candy expels vegetables.

People have to talk about something just to keep their voice boxes in working order so they’ll have good voice boxes in case there’s ever anything really meaningful to say.

Sometimes the hardest thing to do is to trust your team. It’s a lesson I’ve had to relearn quite a few times.

Girls talk to each other like men talk to each other. But girls have an eye for detail.

The duty of rhetoric is to deal with such matters as we deliberate upon without arts or systems to guide us, in the hearing of persons who cannot take in at a glance a complicated argument or follow a long chain of reasoning.

I was gratified to be able to answer promptly, and I did. I said I didn’t know.

Proselytism is solemn nonsense; it makes no sense. We need to get to know each other, listen to each other and improve our knowledge of the world around us.

When I was young, an eccentric uncle decided to teach me how to lie. Not, he explained, because he wanted me to lie, but because he thought I should know how it’s done so I would recognise when I was being lied to.

To me, constructive criticism is when people take ownership of their ideas. That’s why I don’t listen to anything that’s anonymous. But it’s hard; when there’s something hurtful out there, I still want to read it over and over and memorize it and explain my point of view to the person.

As we must account for every idle word, so must we account for every idle silence.

Our heritage and ideals, our code and standards – the things we live by and teach our children – are preserved or diminished by how freely we exchange ideas and feelings.

I’m a great believer that any tool that enhances communication has profound effects in terms of how people can learn from each other, and how they can achieve the kind of freedoms that they’re interested in.

I suppose leadership at one time meant muscles; but today it means getting along with people.

It may happen sometimes that a long debate becomes the cause of a longer friendship. Commonly, those who dispute with one another at last agree.

It should be possible to explain the laws of physics to a barmaid.

Part of what confuses people in times of upheaval is that you’re getting so many different points of view and directions and so and so, how to do this and do that. And a lot of it is written in a language that honestly most people cannot understand.

To conceal anything from those to whom I am attached, is not in my nature. I can never close my lips where I have opened my heart.

Language is the dress of thought.

Language is an intrinsic part of who we are and what has, for good or evil, happened to us.

So when you are listening to somebody, completely, attentively, then you are listening not only to the words, but also to the feeling of what is being conveyed, to the whole of it, not part of it.

A man is more frank and sincere with his emotions than a woman. We girls, I’m afraid, have a tendency to hide our feelings.

It is better to keep your mouth closed and let people think you are a fool than to open it and remove all doubt.

When the people we love stop paying attention, trust begins to slip away and hurt starts seeping in.

In the last analysis, what we are communicates far more eloquently than anything we say or do.

I sent one e-mail in my life. I sent it to Jeff Raikes at Microsoft, and it ended up in court in Minneapolis, so I am one for one.

Animation can explain whatever the mind of man can conceive. This facility makes it the most versatile and explicit means of communication yet devised for quick mass appreciation.

I don’t like people going behind my back.

If you want a love message to be heard, it has got to be sent out. To keep a lamp burning, we have to keep putting oil in it.

Words may show a man’s wit but actions his meaning.

The most dangerous word in any human tongue is the word for brother. It’s inflammatory.

Be not a slave of words.

Words do two major things: They provide food for the mind and create light for understanding and awareness.

No one can lie, no one can hide anything, when he looks directly into someone’s eyes.

Well I have a microphone and you don’t so you will listen to every damn word I have to say!

One thing that I tell people all the time is, ‚I’m not going to answer a call from you after nine o’clock at night or before nine o’clock in the morning unless it’s an emergency.‘