A wonderful fact to reflect upon, that every human creature is constituted to be that profound secret and mystery to every other.
— A Tale of Two Cities
Quotes About Communication
Stephen Hawking credited talking with mankind's greatest achievements, and not talking with its greatest failures. Kahlil Gibran said it takes two to discover truth, one to utter it and one to understand it. Ludwig Wittgenstein pointed out the limit: telling someone something he does not understand is pointless, even if you add that he will not be able to understand it.
Other writers looked at how language shapes thought. C.S. Lewis warned that men do not long continue to think what they have forgotten how to say. Aldous Huxley pictured us floating in language like icebergs, four-fifths under the surface. Gerald R. Ford said that if he went back to college he would concentrate on learning to write and to speak before an audience. Calvin Coolidge supplied the politician's version: you don't have to explain something you haven't said. T.S. Eliot imagined the communication of the dead as tongued with fire beyond the language of the living.
Other writers looked at how language shapes thought. C.S. Lewis warned that men do not long continue to think what they have forgotten how to say. Aldous Huxley pictured us floating in language like icebergs, four-fifths under the surface. Gerald R. Ford said that if he went back to college he would concentrate on learning to write and to speak before an audience. Calvin Coolidge supplied the politician's version: you don't have to explain something you haven't said. T.S. Eliot imagined the communication of the dead as tongued with fire beyond the language of the living.
a story always sounds clear enough at a distance, but the nearer you get to the scene of events the vaguer it becomes.
— Shooting an Elephant
... she had uttered these words simply in order to provoke a reply in certain other words, which she seemed, indeed, to wish to hear spoken, but, from prudence, would let her friend be the first to speak.
— Swann's Way
Writing, the art of communicating thoughts to the mind through the eye, is the great invention of the world...enabling us to converse with the dead, the absent, and the unborn, at all distances of time and space.
— Speeches And Letters Of Abraham Lincoln, 1832 1865
Those who know nothing of foreign languages know nothing of their own.
— Maxims and Reflections
What the dead had no speech for, when living, They can tell you, being dead: the communication / Of the dead is tongued with fire beyond the language of the living.
— Four Quartets
Words are the source of misunderstandings.
— The Little Prince
I grow grandiose, which is a good sign I should become prosaic.
— The Robots of Dawn
Telling someone something he does not understand is pointless, even if you add that he will not be able to understand it.
— Culture and Value
I know I am talking nonsense, but I’d rather go rambling on, and partly expressing something I find it difficult to express, than to keep on transmitting faultless platitudes.
— The Magic Mountain
For though a very few hours spent in the hard labour of incessant talking will dispatch more subjects than can really be in common between any two rational creatures, yet with lovers it is different. Between them no subject is finished, no communication is ever made, till it has been made at least twenty times over.
— Sense and Sensibility
it’s important to make sure that we’re talking with each other in a way that heals, not in a way that wounds.
You don't have to explain something you haven't said.
We shall never be able to remove suspicion and fear as potential causes of war until communication is permitted to flow, free and open, across international boundaries.
If I went back to college again, I'd concentrate on two areas learning to write and to speak before an audience. Nothing in life is more important than the ability to communicate effectively.
All we can do is to prepare for a universal language that will go on changing for ever. We don’t know everything. We aren’t final. I wish we could make that statement a part of the Fundamental Law.
— The Holy Terror
If names be not correct, language is not in accordance with the truth of things.
— The Analects of Confucius
What wretched poverty of language! To compare stars to diamonds!
— Flaubert in Egypt: A Sensibility on Tour
Without language, one cannot talk to people and understand them; one cannot share their hopes and aspirations, grasp their history, appreciate their poetry, or savor their songs.
— Long Walk to Freedom
Nothing is more usual than for philosophers to encroach upon the province of grammarians; and to engage in disputes of words, while they imagine that they are handling controversies of the deepest importance and concern.
— An Enquiry Concerning the Principles of Morals
A language is something infinitely greater than grammar and philology. It is the poetic testament of the genius of a race and a culture, and the living embodiment of the thoughts and fanciesthat have moulded them
— The Discovery of India
A different language is a different vision of life.
I tried to discover, in the rumor of forests and waves, words that other men could not hear, and I pricked up my ears to listen to the revelation of their harmony.
— November
A picture held us captive. And we could not get outside it, for it lay in our language and language seemed to repeat it to us inexorably.
— Philosophical Investigations