Quote Junkie: On Communication

Do not speak unless you can improve on the silence.
~ Spanish Proverb

Noise proves nothing -
often a hen who has merely laid an egg,
cackles as if she had laid an asteroid.
~ Mark Twain

Two monologues do not make a dialogue.
~ Jeff Daly

The trouble with talking too fast
is you may say something you haven't thought of yet.
~ Ann Landers

The real art of conversation is not only to say the right thing at the right place
but to leave unsaid the wrong thing at the tempting moment.
~ Dorothy Nevill

It is better to keep one's mouth shut
and be thought a fool
than to open it and resolve all doubt.
~ Abraham Lincoln

Isn't it surprising how many things, if not said immediately,
seem not worth saying ten minutes from now?
~ Arnot L. Sheppard, Jr.

One of the lessons of history
is that nothing is often a good thing to do
and always a clever thing to say.
~ Will Durant

Blessed is the man who, having nothing to say,
abstains from giving evidence of the fact.
~ George Eliot

Calvin: Sometimes when I'm talking,
my words can't keep up with my thoughts.
I wonder why we think faster than we speak.
Hobbes: Probably so we can think twice.
~ Bill Watterson

Discussion is an exchange of knowledge;
argument an exchange of ignorance.
~ Robert Quillen

If everybody thought before they spoke,
the silence would be deafening.
~ George Barzan

The only valid censorship of ideas
is the right of people not to listen.
~ Tommy Smothers

The right to be heard does not automatically include
the right to be taken seriously.
~ Hubert H. Humphrey

Whenever two good people argue over principles,
they are both right.
~ Marie Ebner von Eschenbach

Ideal conversation must be an exchange of thought, and not,
as many of those who worry most about their shortcomings believe,
an eloquent exhibition of wit or oratory.
~ Emily Post

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