Quotes About Communication

If you keep your mouth shut, no one can ever know how you really feel.

The moral: there's never anyone in the other boat. We are always screaming at an empty vessel. An empty boat isn't targeting us. And neither are all the people creating the sour notes in the soundtrack of our day.

Being smart turns people on. Announcing how smart you are turns them off.

If we always express our opinion, no matter how hurtful or noncontributory it may be, we are exercising our right to be "me.

All other things being equal, your people skills (or lack of them) become more pronounced the higher up you go. In fact, even when all other things are not equal, your people skills often make the difference in how high you go.

reasonable people can disagree.

The only time people actually see that you're not listening to them is when you're displaying extreme impatience. You want them to hurry up and get to the point. People notice that. And they rarely think better of you for it. You may as well be shouting, "Next!" at them.

Basically, there are three things that all good listeners do: They think before they speak; they listen with respect; and they're always gauging their response by asking themselves, "Is it worth it?

Frances Hesselbine knows that listening is a two-part maneuver. There's the part where we actually listen. And there's the part where we speak. Speaking establishes how we are perceived as a listener. What we say is proof of how well we listen. They are two sides of the same coin.

When you find yourself mentally or literally drumming your fingers while someone else is talking, stop the drumming. Stop demonstrating impatience when listening to someone. Stop saying (or thinking) "Next!" It's not only rude and annoying, but it's sure to inspire your employees to find their next boss.

For bosses this means closely monitoring how you hand out encouragement. If you find yourself saying, "Great idea," and then dropping the other shoe with a tempering "but" or "however," try cutting your response off at "idea." Even better, before you speak, take a breath and ask yourself if what you're about to say is worth it.

Stop Asking for Feedback and Then Expressing Your Opinion

There is never anyone in the other boat. When we are angry, we are screaming at an empty vessel.

the best solicited feedback is confidential feedback. It's good because nobody gets embarrassed or defensive.

At no time is freedom of speech more precious than when a man hits his thumb with a hammer.

All media exist to invest our lives with artificial perceptions and arbitrary values

Advertising is the greatest art form of the 20th century.

Schizophrenia may be a necessary consequence of literacy.

The successor to politics will be propaganda. Propaganda, not in the sense of a message or ideology, but as the impact of the whole technology of the times.

The new electronic independence re-creates the world in the image of a global village.

The spoken word was the first technology by which man was able to let go of his environment in order to grasp it in a new way.

Great art speaks a language which every intelligent person can understand. The people who call themselves modernists today speak a different language.

'Money talks' because money is a metaphor, a transfer, and a bridge.

Vietnam was lost in the living rooms of America—not on the battlefields of Vietnam.