Quotations about communication. People are social beings, and we need communication to live in relationship with each other. The challenge of communication is that we are also diverse individuals with different experiences, so what we are trying to communicate may not be exactly what the other person receives.

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To have much learning, to be skillful in handicraft, well-trained in discipline, and to be of good speech — this is the greatest blessing.

— Buddha

In describing today’s accelerating changes, the media fire blips of unrelated information at us. Experts bury us under mountains of narrowly specialized monographs. Popular forecasters present lists of unrelated trends, without any model to show us their interconnections or the forces likely to reverse them. As a result, change itself comes to be seen as anarchic, even lunatic.

— Alvin Toffler

There is an endless net of threads throughout the universe…
At every crossing of the threads there is an individual.
And every individual is a crystal bead.
And every crystal bead reflects
Not only the light from every other crystal in the net
But also every other reflection
Throughout the entire universe.

— Anne Adams, an adaptation of one of the oldest written creations of humanity: “The Net of Jewels, or Indra’s Net”

If you can’t protect yourself with talk, you won’t be alive to protect yourself with guns.

— Arthur Boyd

To truly love we must learn to mix various ingredients — care, affection, recognition, respect, commitment, and trust, as well as honest and open communication.

— bell hooks

People often silence themselves, or “agree to disagree” without fully exploring the actual nature of the disagreement, for the sake of protecting a relationship and maintaining connection. But when we avoid certain conversations, and never fully learn how the other person feels about all of the issues, we sometimes end up making assumptions that not only perpetuate but deepen misunderstandings, and that can generate resentment.

— Brené Brown

Loneliness does not come from having no people about one, but from being unable to communicate the things that seem important to oneself, or from holding certain views which others find inadmissible.

— Carl Jung

Loneliness does not come from having no people around you, but from being unable to communicate the things that seem important to you.

— Carl Jung

I just come and talk to the plants, really–very important to talk to them, they respond I find.

— Charles III of the United Kingdom

How can we speak to each other like equals when one of us is holding a gun?

— Cliff James, Life As A Kite

The greatest problem in communication is the illusion that it has been accomplished.

— Daniel W. Davenport

There are many controversial topics out there – abortion, nuclear weapons, the 2nd Amendment, guns, whatever, the war in Iraq. You’re going to be on one side, somebody’s going to be on the other side. Invite those people to the table. Sit down and talk.

— Daryl Davis

The fantastic advances in the field of electronic communication constitute a greater danger to the privacy of the individual.

— Earl Warren

Communication does not depend on syntax, or eloquence, or rhetoric, or articulation but on the emotional context in which the message is being heard.

— Edwin H. Friedman

The colossal misunderstanding of our time is the assumption that insight will work with people who are unmotivated to change. Communication does not depend on syntax, or eloquence, or rhetoric, or articulation but on the emotional context in which the message is being heard. People can only hear you when they are moving toward you, and they are not likely to when your words are pursuing them. Even the choices words lose their power when they are used to overpower. Attitudes are the real figures of speech.

— Edwin H. Friedman

While you are proclaiming peace with your lips, be careful to have it even more fully in your heart.

— Francis of Assisi

It’s very dramatic when two people come together to work something out. It’s easy to take a gun and annihilate your opposition, but what is really exciting to me is to see people with differing views come together and finally respect each other.

— Fred Rogers

Loneliness is never more cruel than when it is felt in close propinquity with someone who has ceased to communicate.

— Germaine Greer

Talking and eloquence are not the same: to speak and to speak well are two things. A fool may talk, but a wise man speaks.

— Heinrich Heine

Wisdom cannot be imparted. Wisdom that a wise man attempts to impart always sounds like foolishness to someone else … Knowledge can be communicated, but not wisdom. One can find it, live it, do wonders through it, but one cannot communicate and teach it.

— Hermann Hesse, Siddhartha

Knowledge can be communicated by not wisdom.

— Hermann Hesse

Happiness comes when your work and words are of benefit to yourself and others.

— Jack Kornfield, (an attempt to characterize the Buddha’s teachings)

One ought, every day at least, to hear a little song, read a good poem, see a fine picture and, if possible, speak a few reasonable words.

— Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

There’s all the difference in the world between having something to say, and having to say something.

— John Dewey

The only reason to give a speech is to change the world.

— John F. Kennedy

To listen well is as powerful a means of communication and influence as to talk well.

— John Marshall

Don’t talk unless you can improve the silence.

— Jorge Luis Borges

When we aren’t curious in conversations, we judge, tell, blame and even shame, often without even knowing it, which leads to conflict.

— Kirsten Siggins

Parents, choose your words wisely, carefully, thoughtfully. In the same way that violence begets violence and anger begets anger, kindness begets kindness and peace begets peace. Sow words of peace, words that build, words that show respect and belief and support.

— L.R. Knost, Whispers Through Time: Communication Through the Ages and Stages of Childhood

People change and forget to tell each other.

— Lillian Hellman, Toys in the Attic, 1960
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