Quotes About Silence

A great truth comes over him: Trees fall with spectacular crashes. But planting is silent and growth is invisible.

Our advanced technological society is rapidly making objects of us and subtly programming us into conformity to the logic of its system to the degree that this happens, we are also becoming submerged in a new "Culture of Silence".

Every human being, no matter how 'ignorant' or submerged in the 'culture of silence' he may be, is capable of looking critically at his world in dialogical encounter with others.

In the dream I don't tell anyone, you put your head in my lap.

You're in a car with a beautiful boy, and he won't tell you that he loves you, but he loves you.

You said I could have anything I wanted, but I just couldn't say it out loud.

I make up things that I would never say. I say them very quietly.

There are so many things I'm not allowed to tell you.

Don't move. Keep staring straight into my eyes.

Pain makes a noise.

And words, little words, words too small for any hope or promise, not really soothing

We have not been given all the words necessary. We have not been given anything at all.

You said I could have anything I wanted, but I just couldn't say it out loud. Actually, you said Love, for you, is larger than the usual romantic love. It's like a religion. It's terrifying. No one will ever want to sleep with you.

And no one can ever figure out what you want, and you won't tell them

You said I could have anything I wanted, but I just couldn't say it out loud.

but you say the same thing every time. Let's not talk about it, let's just not talk.

There's only one thing I want, don't make me say it

We've made a graveyard out of the bone white afternoon.

Explaining will get us nowhere.

you know that a boy who likes boys is a dead boy, unless he keeps his mouth shut, which is what you didn't do

If we wanted to tell you everything, we would leave more footprints in the snow or kiss you harder.

The hand is a voice that can sing what the voice will not

I have often lamented that we cannot shut our ears with as much ease as we can our eyes.

Washing the men's clothes, caring for their rooms, serving them at table, listening to their orations, but themselves remaining respectfully silent in public assemblages, the Oberlin "coeds" were being prepared for intelligent motherhood and a properly subservient wifehood. (Flexner 1959:30)