8 Great Quotes Illuminating the Concept of Communication
Wanting to illustrate the concept of communication in so many ways as possible and with as many voices I could find did I go hunting for quotations. What follows are some of the best and most thought provoking quotations about communication that I could find. Winston Churchill once said: “… quotations, when engraved upon the memory, give you good thoughts. They also make you anxious to read the authors and look for more.” and I couldn’t agree more.
In fact it was so rewarding that I am turning this into a series with the intention of shedding more and different light on various aspects of the various concepts related to circular communication. In the hope that you like reflecting about concepts and conceptions as much as I do is this thus the first batch of quotations for your reading and reflecting pleasure:
Communication is a continual balancing act, juggling the conflicting needs for intimacy and independence. To survive in the world, we have to act in concert with others, but to survive as ourselves, rather than simply as cogs in a wheel, we have to act alone.
Deborah Tannen
My God! The English language is a form of communication! Conversation isn’t just crossfire where you shoot and get shot at! Where you’ve got to duck for your life and aim to kill! Words aren’t only bombs and bullets—no, they’re little gifts, containing meanings!
Philip Roth
The birth of thought in the depths of the spirit, the shaping and ordering of it into periods, the translation into signs, and above all the transference of it from one spirit to another, the communication that is, if only for an instant, the meeting of two beings, with the unforeseeable consequences that such a meeting always causes, is in fact a miracle; except that the moment one stops to think about it one can’t even write a letter.
Salvatore Satta
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
There is more than a verbal tie between the words common, community, and communication…. Try the experiment of communicating, with fullness and accuracy, some experience to another, especially if it be somewhat complicated, and you will find your own attitude toward your experience changing.
John Dewey
We cannot feel strongly toward the totally unlike because it is unimaginable, unrealizable; nor yet toward the wholly like because it is stale—identity must always be dull company. The power of other natures over us lies in a stimulating difference which causes excitement and opens communication, in ideas similar to our own but not identical, in states of mind attainable but not actual.
Charles Horton Cooley
I have always been among those who believed that the greatest freedom of speech was the greatest safety, because if a man is a fool, the best thing to do is to encourage him to advertise the fact by speaking. It cannot be so easily discovered if you allow him to remain silent and look wise, but if you let him speak, the secret is out and the world knows that he is a fool. So it is by the exposure of folly that it is defeated; not by the seclusion of folly, and in this free air of free speech men get into that sort of communication with one another which constitutes the basis of all common achievement.
Woodrow Wilson
Everywhere one seeks to produce meaning, to make the world signify, to render it visible. We are not, however, in danger of lacking meaning; quite the contrary, we are gorged with meaning and it is killing us.
Jean Baudrillard
I have always loved quotations. While they cannot replace complete works I find it fascinating how much you can pack into just a few words or sentences. Unlike reading the whole book or hearing the entire conversation they leave room for interpretation and reflection. They mean something different to different people and can yet act as facilitators of great thoughts and meaningful acts. Hence have I also decided not offer my interpretation, but to leave them as they are.
The best quotations are the ones that reoccur to us when we need them the most. I have a few of those and hope that you do to. If not then this series of quotations on concepts related to circular communication may help you find some that can guide and support you.
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4 Responses to “8 Great Quotes Illuminating the Concept of Communication”
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Great quotes, thank you for sharing them.
“Leadership and learning are indispensable to each other.” - John F. Kennedy: 35th President of the United States.
The precursor to leadership and learning is effective communication.
Thanks for adding to my communication skill set.
Greg,
I am incredibly sorry that I missed your comment. Somehow I must have been so caught up in redesign and what not that I totally overlooked it.
Great quote by JFK who indeed said some remarkable things. Your addition is right on the money as well.
I am currently enjoying your writing at Lorelle’s so hopefully this is not the last time our paths cross.
i need concept of communication
Searching for unique quotations, brought me to this page.
Your “about” content alone, is worth quoting…
Great site!
Thank you.