Quotes About Communication

Once a man gets a reputation as a liar, he might as well be struck dumb, for people do not listen to the wind.

Nothing could go wrong because nothing had...I meant nothing would. No - Then I quit trying to phrase it, realizing that if time travel ever became widespread, English grammar was going to have to add a whole new set of tenses to describe reflexive situations - conjugations that would make the French literary tenses and the Latin historical tenses look simple.

Mmm, one does have to learn to look at art. But it's up to the artist to use language that can be understood. Most of these jokers don't want to use language you and I can learn; they would rather sneer because we 'fail' to see what they are driving at. If anything. Obscurity is the refuge of incompetence.

Call it that if you like. Calling a tail a leg doesn't make it one.

Formal courtesy between husband and wife is even more important than it is between strangers.

Do you speak English? Certainly. And I understand American.

When did you ever worry about offending me?' 'Always, Man, once I understood that you could be offended.

What the self-styled modern artists are doing is a sort of unemotional pseudo-intellectual masturbation . . . whereas creative art is more like intercourse, in which the artist must seduce—render emotional-his audience, each time.

Sovereign ingredient for a happy marriage: Pay cash or do without. Interest charges not only eat up a household budget; awareness of debt eats up domestic felicity.

You're not privileged to call me 'Boss'; you're not tax deductible.

answered his telephone himself if he happened to be at hand when it signalled because each call offered good odds that he would be justified in being gratifyingly rude to some stranger for daring to invade his privacy without cause—"cause" by Harshaw's definition, not by the stranger's.

Youse guys think this deleted outfit is a blankety-blank nursery. Well, it ain't! See? —Remark attributed to a Hellenic corporal before the walls of Troy, 1194 B.C.

An Englishman and an Arab can learn to think each other's thoughts, in the other's language.

Hendrick, I have explained these matters to you because it is useless to punish a man unless he knows why he is being punished.

Science fiction means different things to different people. When I make a word do a lot of work like that, said Humpty Dumpty, I always pay it extra—in which case the term science fiction has piled up a lot of expensive overtime.

These people who deal in fancification to fool the public think nobody can read and write but themselves.

He was looking that way now and the projected print moved along the screen, but he was not really reading but simply avoiding the eyes of his boss across the table. Mrs. Douglas did not read newspapers; she had other ways of finding out what she needed to know.

You evaded my question." "Then perhaps you had better assume that I intended to evade it.

Everything and anything about a culture can be inferred from the shape of its language—and

The Belt, for all its lonely reaches—or because of them—was as neighborly as a village. They gossiped among themselves, by suit radio. Out in the shining blackness it was good to know that, if something went wrong, there was a man listening not five hundred miles away who would come and investigate if you broke off and did not answer.

It took you long enough to answer your phone." "It's my phone, Mr. Secretary. Sometimes I don't answer it at all.

Television leaves no external scars.

Ben m'boy," Jubal said gently, "as a reporter you are hard-working and sometimes readable.

If a word for a concept isn't in a language, then its culture simply doesn't have the referent the missing word would symbolize." "Oh, twaddle, Stinky! Animals fight—and ants even conduct wars. Are you trying to tell me they have to have words for it before they can do it?