communication quotes

You don’t write because you want to say something, you write because you have something to say.

Remind yourself that winning an argument or proving your point really gets you nowhere in the long run. Win through your actions, not your words.

If it’s going to come out eventually, better have it come out immediately.

We want everybody to act like adults, quit playing games, realize that it’s not just my way or the highway.

To use the same words is not a sufficient guarantee of understanding; one must use the same words for the same genus of inward experience; ultimately one must have one’s experiences in common.

When the players go home, I can’t tell them what to do, so you need to create an atmosphere of trust. I don’t want to think, ‚What are they doing now? Do I need to call them?‘

I’ve been a lot more into Facebook and Twitter and Instagram, which was a bit complicated for me to understand the language of each social media, because they all talk in different ways. It’s a nice way for me to tell people I appreciate them, which I forget to do sometimes.

We don’t need to share the same opinions as others, but we need to be respectful.

When you are trying to impress people with words, the more you say, the more common you appear, and the less in control. Even if you are saying something banal, it will seem original if you make it vague, open-ended, and sphinxlike.

Listen to many, speak to a few.

Never speak to an invalid from behind, nor from the door, nor from any distance from him, nor when he is doing anything. The official politeness of servants in these things is so grateful to invalids, that many prefer, without knowing why, having none but servants about them.

Tell the children the truth.

The royal road to a man’s heart is to talk to him about the things he treasures most.

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.

There is nothing we like to communicate to others as much as the seal of secrecy together with what lies under it.

I have made this letter longer than usual, only because I have not had the time to make it shorter.

If you’ve heard this story before, don’t stop me, because I’d like to hear it again.

Whoever the coach is, my job is to talk to him, understand him and be a better player under him and give my best.

People talk to people who perceive nothing, who have open eyes and see nothing; they shall talk to them and receive no answer; they shall adore those who have ears and hear nothing; they shall burn lamps for those who do not see.

A lie gets halfway around the world before the truth has a chance to get its pants on.

It’s never happened in history that every region in the world could affect every other region simultaneously. The Roman empire and the Chinese empire didn’t know much about each other and had no means of interacting. Now we have every continent able to reach every other.

If you pour your life into songs, you want them to be heard. It’s a desire to communicate. A deep desire to communicate inspires songwriting.

When a man says he had pleasure with a woman he does not mean conversation.

We are masters of the unsaid words, but slaves of those we let slip out.

There, in the chords and melodies, is everything I want to say. The words just jolly it along. It’s always been my way of expressing what, for me, is inexpressible by any other means.

Language is a process of free creation; its laws and principles are fixed, but the manner in which the principles of generation are used is free and infinitely varied. Even the interpretation and use of words involves a process of free creation.

Never say no when a client asks for something, even if it is the moon. You can always try, and anyhow there is plenty of time afterwards to explain that it was not possible.

You don’t lead by hitting people over the head – that’s assault, not leadership.

In my neighborhood, when you’ve got something to say to a guy, you look him in the eye and you say it to him.

How to drive a guy crazy: send him a telegram and on the top put ‚page 2.‘

What I have never been afraid of is to be a little silly, and you can engage people that way. My view is, first you get them to laugh, then you get them to listen.

The single biggest problem in communication is the illusion that it has taken place.

Being a child at home alone in the summer is a high-risk occupation. If you call your mother at work thirteen times an hour, she can hurt you.

We awaken in others the same attitude of mind we hold toward them.

Anyone who says he can see through women is missing a lot.

You hear doom and gloom about the Internet ruining young people’s command of English – that’s nonsense.

One often contradicts an opinion when what is uncongenial is really the tone in which it was conveyed.

A fundamentalist can’t bring himself or herself to negotiate with people who disagree with them because the negotiating process itself is an indication of implied equality.

When you make as many speeches and you talk as much as I do and you get away from the text, it’s always a possibility to get a few words tangled here and there.

I think perhaps the most important problem is that we are trying to understand the fundamental workings of the universe via a language devised for telling one another when the best fruit is.

The great enemy of clear language is insincerity. When there is a gap between one’s real and one’s declared aims, one turns, as it were, instinctively to long words and exhausted idioms, like a cuttlefish squirting out ink.

A friend of mine tells that I talk in shorthand and then smudge it.

The thing that we are trying to do at facebook, is just help people connect and communicate more efficiently.

You can stroke people with words.

I don’t understand why or how we can bully each other.

Never give an order that can’t be obeyed.

I like it when someone tells me ‚I don’t agree.‘ This is a true collaborator. When they say ‚Oh, how great, how great, how great,‘ that’s not useful.

Nothing strengthens authority so much as silence.

But if thought corrupts language, language can also corrupt thought.

Language is a weapon of politicians, but language is a weapon in much of human affairs.

It’s funny because I’ve made a living off of words, but words get in the way of what you really want to say.

What convinces is conviction. Believe in the argument you’re advancing. If you don’t you’re as good as dead. The other person will sense that something isn’t there, and no chain of reasoning, no matter how logical or elegant or brilliant, will win your case for you.

The strong man is the one who is able to intercept at will the communication between the senses and the mind.

Human language appears to be a unique phenomenon, without significant analogue in the animal world.

I wish I could shut up, but I can’t, and I won’t.

Humans cannot avoid trying to influence others. Everything we say or do is examined and interpreted by others for clues as to our intentions.

An intellectual is a man who takes more words than necessary to tell more than he knows.

After one has been in prison, it is the small things that one appreciates: being able to take a walk whenever one wants, going into a shop and buying a newspaper, speaking or choosing to remain silent. The simple act of being able to control one’s person.

A yawn is a silent shout.

Talking isn’t doing. It is a kind of good deed to say well; and yet words are not deeds.