A
few quotes about Language
& Communication
- 2
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Communication
leads to community, that is, to understanding, intimacy
and mutual valuing.
Rollo May
No
one really listens to anyone else, and if you try it for
a while you'll see why.
Mignon McLaughlin
He
who knows only his own side of the case, knows little of
that.
John Stuart Mill
Most
conversations are simply monologues delivered in the presence
of a witness.
Margaret Millar
A
man thinks that by mouthing hard words he understands hard
things.
Herman Melville
I
quote others only in order the better to express myself.
Michel de Montaigne
There
is in every child a painstaking teacher, so skilful that
he obtains identical results in all children in all parts
of the world. The only language men ever speak perfectly
is the one they learn in babyhood, when no one can teach
them anything!
Maria Montessori
We
die. That may be the meaning of life. But we do language.
That may be the measure of our lives.
Toni Morrison
People
say conversation is a lost art; how often I have wished
it were.
Edward R. Murrow
The
newest computer can merely compound, at speed, the oldest
problem in the relations between human beings, and in the
end the communicator will be confronted with the old problem,
of what to say and how to say it.
Edward R. Murrow
The
best way to keep one's word is not to give it.
Napoleon I, Maxims
The
problems of society will also be the problems of the predominant
language of that society. It is the carrier of its perceptions,
its attitudes, and its goals, for through it, the speakers
absorb entrenched attitudes. The guilt of English then must
be recognized and appreciated before its continued use can
be advocated.
Njabulo Ndebele
Of
those who say nothing, few are silent.
Thomas Neiel
The
real art of conversation is not only to say the right thing
at the right place but to leave unsaid the wrong thing at
the tempting moment.
Dorothy Nevill
Language
ought to be the joint creation of poets and manual workers.
George Orwell
The
great enemy of clear language is insincerity.
George Orwell
Never
throw mud. You may miss the mark, and you'll have dirty
hands.
Joseph Parker
I
wonder what language truck drivers are using, now that everyone
is using theirs?
Sydney Pfizer
The
true genius shudders at incompleteness - and usually prefers
silence to saying something which is not everything it should
be.
Edgar Allan Poe
It
is impossible to speak in such a way that you cannot be
misunderstood.
Karl Popper
The
more elaborate our means of communication, the less we communicate.
Joseph Priestley
We
are healed of a suffering only by expressing it to the full.
Marcel Proust
No
one has a finer command of language than the person who
keeps his mouth shut.
Sam Rayburn
The
most basic and powerful way to connect to another person
is to listen. Just listen. Perhaps the most important thing
we ever give each other is our attention…. A loving
silence often has far more power to heal and to connect
than the most well-intentioned words.
Rachel Naomi Remen
Lying
is done with words and also with silence.
Adrienne Rich
When
a language creates -- as it does -- a community within the
present, it does so only by courtesy of a community between
the present and the past.
Christopher Ricks
Be
sincere; be brief; be seated.
Franklin Delano Roosevelt
The
secret of language is the secret of sympathy and its full
charm is possible only to the gentle.
John Ruskin
I
am annoyed by individuals who are embarrassed by pauses
in a conversation. To me, every conversational pause refreshes.
George Sanders
Feelings
of worth can flourish only in an atmosphere where individual
differences are appreciated, mistakes are tolerated, communication
is open, and rules are flexible -- the kind of atmosphere
that is found in a nurturing family.
Virginia Satir
Language
furnishes the best proof that a law accepted by a community
is a thing that is tolerated and not a rule to which all
freely consent.
Ferdinand De Saussure
The
word of man is the most durable of all material.
Arthur Schopenhauer
When
we have the courage to speak out - to break our silence
- we inspire the rest of the "moderates" in our
communities to speak up and voice their views.
Sharon Schuster
I
am telling you to be a slow-speaking person.
Seneca
I
understand a fury in your words,
But not the words.
William Shakespeare
My
words fly up, my thoughts remain below:
Words without thoughts never to heaven go.
William Shakespeare
They
have been at a great feast of languages, and stolen the
scraps.
William Shakespeare
The
English have no respect for their language, and will not
teach their children to speak it.
George Bernard Shaw
England
and America are two countries divided by a common language.
George Bernard Shaw
The
trouble with her is that she lacks the power of conversation
but not the power of speech.
George Bernard Shaw
One
way to prevent conversation from being boring is to say
the wrong thing.
Frank Sheed
Isn't
it surprising how many things, if not said immediately,
seem not worth saying ten minutes from now?
Arnot L. Sheppard, Jr.
Don't
speak unless you can improve on the silence.
Spanish Proverb
Man
does not live by words alone, despite the fact that sometimes
he has to eat them.
Adlai Stevenson
Words
calculated to catch everyone may catch no one.
Adlai E. Stevenson Jr.
The
quality of our thoughts is bordered on all sides by our
facility with language.
J. Michael Straczynski
Argument
is the worst sort of conversation.
Jonathan Swift
Let
a fool hold his tongue and he will pass for a sage.
Pubilius Syrus
The
great thing about human language is that it prevents us
from sticking to the matter at hand.
Lewis Thomas
You
can communicate without motivating, but it impossible to
motivate without communicating.
John Thompson
In
describing today's accelerating changes, the media fire
blips of unrelated information at us. Experts bury us under
mountains of narrowly specialized monographs. Popular forecasters
present lists of unrelated trends, without any model to
show us their interconnections or the forces likely to reverse
them. As a result, change itself comes to be seen as anarchic,
even lunatic.
Alvin Toffler
The
first duty of love is to listen
Paul Tillich
Our
language has wisely sensed the two sides of being alone.
It has created the word, loneliness to express the pain
of being alone. And it has created the word, solitude to
express the glory of being alone
Paul Tillich
Man
invented language to satisfy his deep need to complain.
Lily Tomlin
Language
is the amber in which a thousand precious and subtle thoughts
have been safely embedded and preserved. It has arrested
ten thousand lightning flashes of genius, which, unless
thus fixed and arrested, might have been as bright, but
would have also been as quickly passing and perishing, as
the lightning.
Richard Chevenix Trench
Well-timed
silence hath more eloquence than speech.
Martin Farquhar Tupper
The
difference between the right word and almost the right word
is the difference between lightning and a lightning bug.
Mark Twain
Only
presidents, editors and people with tapeworm have the right
to use the editorial 'we'.
Mark Twain
The
universal principle of etymology in all languages: words
are carried over from bodies and from the properties of
bodies to express the things of the mind and spirit. The
order of ideas must follow the order of things.
Giambattista Vico
As
societies grow decadent, the language grows decadent, too.
Words are used to disguise, not to illuminate, action: you
liberate a city by destroying it. Words are to confuse,
so that at election time people will solemnly vote against
their own interests
Gore Vidal
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.
Kurt Vonnegut, Jr.
I
personally think we developed language because of our deep
inner need to complain.
Jane Wagner
When
you speak, ask questions. Don't lecture.
Denis Waitley
We
don't just borrow words; on occasion, English has pursued
other languages down alleyways to beat them unconscious
and rifle their pockets for new vocabulary.
Booker T. Washington
Calvin:
Sometimes when I'm talking, my words can't keep up with
my thoughts. I wonder why we think faster than we speak.
Hobbes: Probably so we can think twice.
Bill Watterson
Numbers
constitute the only universal language.
Nathanael West
Keep
the other person's well-being in mind when you feel an attack
of soul-purging truth coming on.
Betty White
There
is no such thing as conversation. It is an illusion. There
are intersecting monologues, that is all.
Rebecca West
If
other people are going to talk, conversation becomes impossible.
James McNeill Whistler
English
usage is sometimes more than mere taste, judgment and education
-- sometimes it's sheer luck, like getting across the street.
E. B. White
Viewed
freely, the English language is the accretion and growth
of every dialect, race, and range of time, and is both the
free and compacted composition of all.
Walt Whitman
Language
shapes the way we think, and determines what we can think
about.
Benjamin Lee Whorf
As
advertising blather becomes the nation's normal idiom, language
becomes printed noise.
George F. Will
Poetry
is the language of feeling.
W. Winter
If you wouldn't write it and sign it, don't say it.
Earl Wilson
If
I am to speak ten minutes, I need a week for preparation;
if fifteen minutes, three days; if half an hour, two days;
if an hour, I am ready now.
Woodrow Wilson
The
limits of my language means the limits of my world.
Ludwig Wittgenstein
If
we spoke a different language, we would perceive a somewhat
different world.
Ludwig Wittgenstein
Think
like a wise man but communicate in the language of the people.
William Butler Yeats
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