Quotes About Communication

And I tell you this: you do not lead by hitting people over the head. Any damn fool can do that, but it's usually called 'assault'—not 'leadership.'…I'll tell you what leadership is. It's persuasion—and conciliation—and education—and patience. It's long, slow, tough work. That's the only kind of leadership I know—or believe in—or will

There was, of course, a more immediate point to frequent gatherings of lawmakers, diplomats, and cabinet officers at the president's table. It tends to be more difficult to oppose—or at least to vilify—someone with whom you have broken bread and drunk wine. Caricatures crack as courses are served; imagined demonic plots fade with dessert.

It tends to be more difficult to oppose—or at least to vilify—someone with whom you have broken bread and drunk wine. Caricatures

The Jefferson style – cultivate his elders, make himself pleasant to his contemporaries, and used his pen and his intellect to shape the debate – arm him well for the national arena.

It is a charming thing to be loved by everybody, he told his grandchildren, and the way to obtain it is, never to quarrel or be angry with anybody. He hated arguing face-to-face, preferring to smooth out the rough edges of conversation, leading some people to believe Jefferson agreed with them when, in fact, he was seeking to avoid conflict

the key to all diplomacy—was knowing when they were serious about their threats and when they were posturing.

I have, for instance, silently corrected Jefferson's frequent use of "it's" for "its" and "recieve" for "receive

They all live in cities, together, and can act in a body readily and at all times; they give chief employment to the newspapers, and therefore have most of them under their command. The agricultural interest is dispersed over a great extent of country, have little means of intercommunication with each other, and feeling their own strength and will, are conscious that a single exertion of these will at any time crush the machinations against their government. Jefferson

He believed in constant conversation between the president and lawmakers, for Jefferson thought that "if the members are to know nothing but what is important enough to be put into a public message Ã¢â'¬Â¦ it becomes a government of chance and not of design."24

If you treat people as monuments you limit the capacity to teach. (on Armchair Expert podcast)

If you ever sit here, you will learn that you cannot, just by shouting from the housetops, get what you want all the time.

We have seen the hard looks and heard the statements in which not each other's ideas are challenged, but each other's motives." He

Today we are faced with the pre-eminent fact that, if civilization is to survive, we must cultivate the science of human relationships—the ability of all peoples, of all kinds, to live together and work together in the same world, at peace.

People who are normal (i.e., sane, sensible) don't try to open lines of communication with total strangers by writing them a series of disjointed, weird, cryptic messages.

I think our natural disposition as humans is to plod along until we get old and stop. But with social media, we've created a stage for constant artificial high drama.

Well," he said, "the downside of having no barriers between doctors and patients was that everyone became a patient." There

She chuckled to herself, pressed send, and wandered around the airport for half an hour, sporadically checking Twitter. "I got nothing," she told me. "No replies." I imagined her feeling a bit deflated about this—that sad feeling when nobody congratulates you for being funny, that black silence when the Internet doesn't talk back.

Goebbels thinks that no one since the Frenchman LeBon has understood the mind of the masses as well as he," wrote Goebbels's aide Rudolf Semmler in his wartime diary.

Facebook is where you lie to your friends, Twitter is where you tell the truth to strangers.

I phoned home but my wife didn't answer. It crossed my mind that she might be dead. I panicked. Then it turned out that she wasn't dead. She had just been at the shops.

You remain with the person you've just been yelling at until the resentments fizzle. That's how wounds heal.

When you gaze into the eyes of another person you can only see as far as his closed door. So take it as an opportunity to knock on that door. If he doesn't want to open the door you bow to him and you say, That's fine. When you're ready.

I love the way you talk. You just let it flow from you as if you own all the words in the world. They're your personal property and you make them dance for you.

If we amplify everything, we hear nothing.