Quotes About Dialogue

You need to talk about it. Explain it. Let people ask questions.

if I could develop one new skill that would make a big difference in how most people communicate, it would be the skill of making a request.

The person who knows only his side of the argument knows little of that.

A free theologian works in communication with other theologians...He waits for them and asks them to wait for him. Our sadly lacking yet indispensable theological co-operation depends directly or indirectly on whether or not we are wiling to wait for one another, perhaps lamenting, yet smiling with tears in our eyes.

there is no such thing as a character in a script, only words on a page. An actor speaks these words of dialogue, and so the reader forms a sense of an actual person, though the character himself is an illusion.

The Socratic teacher turns his students away from himself and back onto themselves; he hides in paradoxes, makes himself inaccessible. The intimate relationship between student and teacher here is not one of submission, but of a contest for truth.

I and my public understand each other very well: it does not hear what I say, and I don't say what it wants to hear.

It is impossible to speak in such a way that you cannot be misunderstood.

A rationalist is simply someone for whom it is more important to learn than to be proved right; someone who is willing to learn from others - not by simply taking over another's opinions, but by gladly allowing others to criticize his ideas and by gladly criticizing the ideas of others

The aim of argument, or of discussion, should not be victory but progress.

Some philosophers have made a virtue of talking to themselves; perhaps because they felt that there was nobody else worth talking to. I fear that the practice of philosophizing on this somewhat exalted plane may be a symptom of the decline of rational discussion. No doubt God talks mainly to Himself because He has no one worth talking to. But a philosopher should know that he is no more godlike that any other man. (pp xx)

The war of ideas is a Greek invention. It is one of the most important inventions ever made. Indeed, the possibility of fighting with with words and ideas instead of fighting with swords is the very basis of our civilization, and especially of all its legal and parliamentary institutions.

that we be there to be spoken to than absent to be spoken about.

An honest conversation with anyone is a form of praying.

Never argue Greek legends with a Greek...

A good listener is a good talker with a sore throat.

A good listener is not someone with nothing to say. A good listener is a good talker with a sore throat.

There's more than one way to tell each other things, and there's more than one way to listen, too.

The thing I hate about an argument is that it always interrupts a discussion.

Il y a en tout homme un spectateur et un acteur, celui qui parle et celui qui répond.

I want to know your ideas," Sam said. "I really want to know them. I love hearing your ideas. That's my favorite thing in the world.

Jedes du ist ein Alter Ego

All of this seems as though it were yesterday, or forever ago, in that crevasse between space and time that stays fixed in the imagination. I remember it all because I remember it all. In crisis with someone you love, the dialogue is as burnished as a scar on a tree.

I missed Caroline in dozens of ways, but through them all was the absence of the ongoing dialogue, real or imagined.