Quotes About Communication

Well, the reason I called is . . . because he left me a message, and said he was coming back, and that he hoped to see me, a lot.

Prayer is not first and foremost talking to God, it's first and foremost listening to God.

I am overwhelmed sometimes and feel a great deal of wonder at words, just simple words and how deeply we can touch each other with them, though I know that most of the time language is the most abused of all human abilities or traits.

Anybody can act violently--there is nothing to it, but not every person is able to destroy his enemy with words.

That was the responsibility that went with being human, old Ku'oosh said, the story behind each word must be told so there could be no mistake in the meaning of what had been said; and this demanded great patience and love.

He liked the way she talked. There was something in her eyes too. He saw it the first time when she had said, 'I've seen you before many times, and I always remembered you.' Josiah could not remember ever seeing her before, but there was something in her hazel brown eyes that made him believe her.

The truth of course was otherwise, but Lecha had never felt she owed anyone the truth, unless it was truth about their own lives, and then they had to pay her to tell them.

Emotional expression governs, and changes, interaction. Anger, for example, produces distance, whereas vulnerability disarms. Thus, interpersonal conflict can be resolved by changing what people express

you would only laugh at me, not because my thoughts were stupid, but because I was so foolish as to attempt to tell them to you. If

Have you ever tried to hold the gaze of someone who's just complimented you? It's hard as hell. At least I think it was a compliment.

He needs a wife who will love him enough to tell him the truth and to respectfully challenge his selfishness, his self-absorption, and his self-deception.

When you put your foot down and say, "I will not allow myself or the kids to be treated this way anymore. It's destructive to me, to them, and to our marriage," you are not going against God by speaking the truth in love. You are standing for goodness, for truth, and for the healing and restoration of your marriage.

When deceit and attack become a regular part of marital interactions, there is no clear communication, no resolution to the problem, and no healing. It's impossible to have a close, loving relationship with someone you can't trust, can't talk with, or who won't take a look at himself when he hurts you.

Our emotions always serve a purpose, like the warning lights on a car dashboard. Ignoring them doesn't make them go away, and often ignoring our feelings only makes the problem worse.

If you are explaining, you're losing. It's a bumper sticker culture. People have to get it like that, and if they don't, if it takes three seconds to make them understand, you're off their radar screen. Three seconds to understand, or you lose. This is our problem.

We, the most powerful democracy in the world, have developed a strong norm against talking about politics. It's fine to talk about politics with people you agree with. But it is rude to argue about politics with people you disagree with. Political discourse becomes isolated, and isolated discourse becomes more extreme. We say what our friends want to hear, and hear very little beyond what our friends say.

"Writing" is the Latin of our times. The modern language of the people is video and sound.

It is not always possible to know, when you make a note of an event, or a state of mind, how this may strike someone perhaps ten thousand years later.

My major aim was to shape a book which would make its own comment, a wordless statement: to talk through the way it was shaped.

At no time, anywhere, was the population of a country told the truth: facts about events trickled into general consciousness much later, if ever.

I don't know why I still find it so hard to accept that words are faulty and by their very nature inaccurate.

Do you know what people really want? Everyone, I mean. Everybody in the world is thinking: I wish there was just one other person I could really talk to, who could really understand me, who'd be kind to me. That's what people really want, if they're telling the truth.

You have to deduce a person's real feelings about a thing by a smile she does not know is on her face, by the way bitterness tightens muscles at a mouth's corner, or the way air is allowed to flow from the lungs.

But one may acquire what MacIntyre calls a "second first language," a language which is learned in the same way that a child learns to use the native tongue. A missionary or an anthropologist who really hopes to understand and enter into the adopted culture will not do so by trying to learn the language in the way a tourist uses a phrasebook and a dictionary.