Quotes About Communication

A guy might find a woman attractive but she might find him repulsive. The two must tango together. And LSM is capturing the dance—whereas the questionnaire is just assessing the dancers separately.

Human relationships are not rocket science—they are far, far more complicated.

Over the years, I've noticed that most of my colleagues and friends have their own favorite but relatively obscure words that even they aren't familiar with. The

I've since learned that when someone changes the conversational direction, it serves as a powerful marker of what is on his or her mind.

We need to take out the trash." As it happens, I have no intention of actually analyzing that data. Nor am I proposing to my son that we take a family outing to the trash bin. In many situations, people use the word we when they mean you. It serves as a polite form to order others around.

That our feelings affect the ways we think about the world is the take-home message of this chapter. Our emotions influence our thinking, which is reflected in the ways we use function words.

Human relationships are not rocket science—they are far, far more complicated. We can get our top scientists together and send people to the moon. Two speakers—male or female—can troubleshoot a carburetor in under an hour. But even the most creative and diligent scientists, much less two interested speakers, are unable to understand, explain, or agree on why actress Jennifer Lopez is attracted to the men she is or how long she will remain married to her current husband.

universes fashioned by words and concepts that work together to provide a more or less coherent frame of reference for all thought and action.5

Pee pee, poo poo. Pee? Poo. Poo, poo.

If they didn't want to know, they shouldn't have asked.

She had clothed herself, even at near-midnight, and brushed her platinum hair. "Where's Mark?" His father eyed him tiredly. "He's gone." His mother kneaded the fabric of the chair in both her hands. "Oh, you have to tell him, Peter. You can't just say that." "All right." His father stared straight ahead for another long moment, precisely into nothing

Well, what kind of hello is that? Besides. You wouldn't want me as a supply officer, Bagger. I'd fuck it up so bad you'd starve.

We tend to forget that words are, themselves, ideas. They might be called ideas in a state of suspended animation. When the words are mastered the ideas tend to come alive again.

Thus, words being symbols of ideas, we can collect ideas by collecting words. The fellow who said he tried reading the dictionary but couldn't get the hang of the story simply missed the point: namely, that it is a collection of short stories.

I found cause to wonder upon what ground the English accuse Americans of corrupting the language by introducing slang words. I think I heard more and more different kinds of slang during my few weeks' stay in London than in my whole "tenderloin" life in New York. But I suppose the English feel that the language is theirs, and that they may do with it as they please without at the same time allowing that privilege to others.

In an astonishingly short time I reached the point where the language taught itself—where I learned to speak merely by speaking. This point is the place which students taught foreign languages in our schools and colleges find great difficulty in reaching. I think the main trouble is that they learn too much of a language at a time. A French child with a vocabulary of two hundred words can express more spoken ideas than a student of French can with a knowledge of two thousand.

It is a difficult thing for a white man to learn what a colored man really thinks; because, generally, with the latter an additional and different light must be brought to bear on what he thinks; and his thoughts are often influenced by considerations so delicate and subtle that it would be impossible for him to confess or explain them to one of the opposite race.

It may be because Southerners are very much like Frenchmen in that they must talk; and not only must they talk, but they must express their opinions.

I noticed that among this class of colored men the word "nigger" was freely used in about the same sense as the word "fellow," and sometimes as a term of almost endearment; but I soon learned that its use was positively and absolutely prohibited to white men.

Unless you have chains around your ankles, I want to see your elbows pumping down the hallway now!' Isn't it nicer, however, to be asked to "drop by"?

The first thing you should say when you call 911 is "I need [service] at [address]. Again, that's [address]." Your operator can have the right people dispatched while you are sharing more details of your story.

If his conversation is more about your physical qualities than your goals in life, he's not thinking long-term.

I will putter as though I had not heard,And lift him into my arms and singWhether he hears my song or not.

But what is the point of tiring oneself over words that are being used from two quite different points of view? One should instead rely on the meaning intended.