Quotes About Communication

What a kid I got, I told him about the birds and the bees and he told me about the butcher and my wife.

I told my wife the truth. I told her I was seeing a psychiatrist. Then she told me the truth: that she was seeing a psychiatrist, two plumbers, and a bartender.

I'm not a hypochondriac, but my gynaecologist firmly believes I am.

I haven't spoken to my wife in years. I didn't want to interrupt her.

With my dog I don't get no respect. He keeps barking at the front door. He don't want to go out. He wants me to leave.

Feedback is oxygen. It's lifeblood. We can't grow and develop without it.

Your belief system needs to include the idea that feedback from others should not be feared but desired.

The hard things people need to say and hear are those things that can do the most to help them see the reality of a situation, a reality that can make all the difference between success and failure. That's the prize. It's not about the hard things hurting you; it's about the hard things helping you see a reality that will move you to a better place to get the results you want. Now

What people really want is the ability to connect to each other, not to companies.

Films are no longer concerned with the silence of God, but with the chattering of men.

I was instructed long ago by a wise editor, If you understand something you can explain it so that almost anyone can understand it. If you don't, you won't be able to understand your own explanation. . . . Jargon is the last refuge of the scoundrel.

A work is not about what it is about. It is about how it is about what it is about.

Anyone who has the price of a newspaper should have a fair chance of understanding most of what's written in it

What does it take for you and others to relax? It may be talking over a drink, or meeting at a vacation lodge in some picturesque spot, or dressing less formally during the meeting and calling one another by your first names.

Durante más de doce años, Bruce Patton ha colaborado con nosotros en redactar y explicar todas las ideas de este libro. El año pasado se hizo cargo de la difícil tarea de volcar nuestro pensamiento conjunto en un texto con el que estuviéramos todos de acuerdo. Es un placer darle la bienvenida a Bruce, editor de la primera y coautor de esta segunda edición.

At the very least, if you and the other side cannot reach first-order agreement, you can usually reach second-order agreement—that is, agree on where you disagree, so that you both know the issues in dispute, which are not always obvious.

To get what we want, we are compelled to negotiate.

Negotiation, Information Technology, and the Problem of the Faceless Other," in Leigh L. Thompson, editor, Negotiation Theory and Research (Psychology Press, 2006).

Negotiations are not likely to make much progress as long as one side believes that the fulfillment of their basic human needs is being threatened by the other.

Be hard on the problem, soft on the people.

It is easy to forget sometimes that a negotiation is not a debate. Nor is it a trial.

The participants should come to see themselves as working side by side, attacking the problem, not each other. Hence the first proposition: Separate the people from the problem.

Recast an attack on you as an attack on the problem.

When anger and misperception are high, some thoughts are best left unsaid.