Quotes About Interaction

When you get an e-mail and reply to the sender, you simply obliterate everything they sent you and then, in small square brackets, write: [deletia] It stands for everything that's been lost.

The less of a life, the more mail you need

Always keep your mouth shut with a drunk. You can never win with piss tanks. The most you can hope for is to break even.

At meetings you have to explain what you've accomplished, so naturally you fluff up your work a bit, like pillows on a couch.

How strange that all you have to do sometimes to meet somebody is walk up to their house and ring a doorbell, and magically they appear as if from nowhere.

classic example of what we programmers call emergent behavior.

To most people, Metcalf had discovered, silence was even more unbearable than pointed questioning.

Anyway, these conclusions came from people who had never spent any time with chimpanzees. You can't tell anything from a two-hour videotape. I spent five years with five chimpanzees. There are so many modes of communication between human and chimp that can't be quantified. Body language. Vehemence and speed of gesture, facial expression. You had to be there with Jennie to understand the depth of communication. With our enemies out there, and a Senator against us, we got hammered.

game theory, was called the "ultimatum game.

I remember shaking her hand while her eyes wandered about the room, looking over my head, at my feet—like a rude guest at a party.

He was lying on his back, eating peanuts, and gazing straight up with binoculars at the troop of spider monkeys. They in turn were lined up on a limb fifty feet above, staring down at him and eating leaves. It was a funny sight, two curious primate species observing each other with fascination.

In his groundbreaking book Guns, Germs, and Steel, biologist Jared Diamond poses the question: Why did Old World diseases devastate the New World and not the other way around? Why did disease move in only one direction?* The answer lies in how the lives of Old World and New World people diverged after that cross-continental migration more than fifteen thousand years ago.

The wave changed instantly by rock; the rock changed by the wave returning over and over.

Out of respect, a man must veil his words when talking with a woman, but with a man he can frankly say whatever's on his mind.

A man should either not converse with kings at all, or say what is agreeable to them.

If one sticks too rigidly to one's principles,one would hardly see anybody,

An appreciative listener is always stimulating.

All around us are people, of all classes, of all nationalities, of all ages. For three days these people, these strangers to one another, are brought together. They sleep and eat under one roof, they cannot get away from each other. At the end of three days they part, they go their several ways, never, perhaps, to see each other again.

Everyone likes talking about himself. - Hercule Poirot

In conversation, points arise! If a human being converses much, it is impossible for him to avoid the truth! (Hercule Poirot)

It is a profound belief of mine that if you can induce a person to talk to you for long enough, on any subject whatever! sooner or later they will give themselves away.

What I wanted, frankly, was someone who would argue me out of the things that I was thinking.

Wherever there is human nature, there is drama.

The human and personal element can never be ignored.