Quotes About Understanding

Whether I praise or criticize someone's action, I imply that I am their judge, that I'm engaged in rating them or what they have done.

Never hear what somebody thinks about you, you'll live longer. Hear that they're in pain. Don't hear their analysis.

While we may not consider the way we talk to be 'violent,' our words often lead to hurt and pain, whether for others or for ourselves.

Every act of communication is an act of translation.

To write or speak is to communicate. To communicate is to share meanings, make them 'common' to all participants in the discourse. (The etymological root of communication means 'common.')

If other people are going to talk, conversation becomes impossible.

The process of translating comprises in its essence the whole secret of human understanding of the world and of social communication.

Punishment is the root of violence on our planet.

One who cares is one who listens.

There are always more people who prefer to speak than to listen.

No one really listens to anyone else, and if you try it for a while you'll see why.

Since in order to speak, one must first listen, learn to speak by listening.

The dead might as well try to speak to the living as the old to the young.

At the core of all anger is a need that is not being fulfilled.

My basic rule is to speak slowly and simply so that my audience has an opportunity to follow and think about what I am saying.

Humor is the affectionate communication of insight.

Listen to all the conversations of our world, between nations as well as between individuals. They are, for the most part, dialogues of the deaf.

Always listen to what people need rather than what they are thinking about us.

Violence comes from the belief that other people cause our pain and therefore deserve punishment.

Communication is mutual feeling with someone, not a didactic process of information.

Communication across the revolutionary divide is inevitably partial.

The communication of ideas requires a similitude of thought and language . . .

Labeling and diagnosis is a catastrophic way to communicate. Telling other people what's wrong with them greatly reduces, almost to zero, the probability that we're going to get what we're after.

It's about communication, no matter how impossibly hard your art is to understand and how much of an ivory tower or high horse you get on, it's still basically communication or why are you doing it?