Quotes About Misunderstanding

What I mean and what I say is two different things, the BFG announced rather grandly.

Words', he said, 'is oh such a twitch-tickling problem to me all my life. So you must simply try to be patient and stop squibbling. As I am telling you before, I know exactly what words I am wanting to say, but somehow or other they is always getting squiff-squiddled around.

Well, first of all, said the BFG, human beans is not really believing in giants, is they? Human beans is not thinking we exist.

I always thought that a veruca was a sort of wart that you got on the sole of your foot!

It's very difficult to phone people in China, Mr President,' said the Postmaster General. 'The country's so full of Wings and Wongs, every time you wing you get the wong number.

I beg your pardon?

Youse guys think this deleted outfit is a blankety-blank nursery. Well, it ain't! See? —Remark attributed to a Hellenic corporal before the walls of Troy, 1194 B.C.

He did not expect reasonable conduct from human beings; he considered most people fit candidates for protective restraint and wet packs. He simply wished heartily that they would leave him alone!—all but the few he chose for playmates. He was firmly convinced that, left to himself, he would have long since achieved nirvana . . . dived into his own belly button and disappeared from view, like those Hindu jokers. Why couldn't they leave a man alone?

Talking with a Martian is something like talking with an echo. You don't get any argument but you don't get results either.

Sir, talking with a Martian is like talking with an echo. You don't get argument but you don't get results.

Prof's purpose was to short him out – but sometimes Prof was too subtle; some people talk better if they breathe vacuum.

Don't talk dirty. Did you say 'thoat'?" "Yes. This is Barsoom." "I thoat that was what you said." "If that's a pun, you can eat it for supper. With peanut butter.

But don't worry; almost no one in this ship speaks System English and she isn't one of the few. They talk their 'secret language' -- only it isn't secret; it's just Finnish.

must do this. If she behaves strangely, or if something goes dreadfully wrong, or there are many tears, he usually doesn't understand that marriage is a totally different experience for her than for him.

Miscommunication, misunderstanding and general misjudgment of one another is vastly increased by the fact that few of us know about these levels of circuitry, and we all tend to assume that the person we are interacting with is on the same circuit we are.

We are all walled cities shouting at each other over the armaments of our preconceptions.

Each of us has a "favorite" circuit — that is, a circuit that has been more heavily imprinted than the others. Miscommunication, misunderstanding and general misjudgment of one another is vastly increased by the fact that few of us know about these levels of circuitry, and we all tend to assume that the person we are interacting with is on the same circuit we are.

You, a male, have to have a business meeting with a Feminist who expects all, not sombunall, men to act unfairly or brutally. You try to remain calm and judicious, but her attitude annoys you more and more. Eventually, her hostility keys off your hostility. A prophecy has fulfilled itself: you have proven to her that her view of men as dangerous creatures has just had itself confirmed one more time.

The peoples of the earth are islands," said the late Clement Atlee, "shouting at each other over oceans of misunderstanding." Each island is a separate reality-tunnel created by (a) our culture, (b) our sub-culture and (c) by the myth-maker or artist in each of us who is the adamantine individuality that makes you and me unique human selves, not replicable units like the ants in a hive.

Semantic noise also seems to haunt every communication system. A man may sincerely say I love fish, and two listeners may both hear him correctly, yet the two will neurosemantically file this in their brains under opposite categories. One will think the man loves to dine on fish, and the other will think he loves to keep fish (in an aquarium).

It was just a sense that in almost all my dealings with almost everyone I'd talked with, there was another story being told that I couldn't hear.

The woman looked at me as if I had proposed sodomy.

You don't have to explain something you didn't say.

Button's face was blank as Pike approached, but a deep line cut Futardo's brow. Pike wondered what she was thinking. Button's jacket was already off in anticipation of the coming heat, and his hands were in his pockets. He didn't take them out to shake. Instead, he nodded toward the canal. "There you go." Pike looked, and in that moment he realized all his assumptions were wrong.