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Communication Quotes

 

Top 40 Communication Quotes

 

No 1 (Best quote!)Communication Quotes

Think like a wise man but express yourself like the common people

- W. B. Yeats 1865–1939 Irish poet, pictured right.

 

 

No 2Communication Quotes

Brevity is the soul of wit, (wit meaning skill).

(Polonius in Hamlet)

- William Shakespeare (1564–1616), English playwright, pictured right.


 

 

No 3Communication Quotes

I detest jargon of every kind.

(Marianne in Sense and Sensibility)

 - Jane Austen (1775-1817), English writer, pictured right  

 

 

No 4Communication Quotes

The problem with the world today is communication. Too much communication.

- Homer Simpson (in The Simpsons TV series), pictured right.

 

Communication Quotes

Email is particularly problematic:  

Emails get in the way of serious consideration of what you want to do.

- Bob Geldof (1951-), businessman and campaigner for Africa, pictured right.

 

 

No 5Communication Quotes

We have two ears and one mouth that we may listen the more and talk the less.

- Zeno of Citium (334-262 BC), Greek philosopher, pictured right.

 Communication Quotes

So Polonius in Shakespeare's, pictured right, play Hamlet says:

Give every man thy ear, but few thy voice.

 Communication Quotes

Bing Crosby (1903-77), pictured right, the American singer, also comments:


I listen a lot and talk less. You can't learn anything when you're talking.

 Communication Quotes

Ambrose Bierce (1842-1914), the American writer,pictured right, defines a bore as:

A person who talks when you wish him to listen

 

 

 

No 6Communication Quotes

The best communication forces you to listen.

- Max De Pree, pictured right, Leadership Is An Art (1987)

 

 

 

No 7Communication Quotes

Listen with the ear of the heart.

- St. Benedict (480-547), pictured right, Italian founder of the famous Benedictine Order of monks

 

 

No 8Communication Quotes

I hear and I forget; I see and I remember; I do and I understand.

- Confucius (551–479 BC), Chinese philosopher, pictured right.

 

Confucius also says:

He who speaks without modesty will find it difficult to make his words good.

The superior man is modest in his speech but exceeds in his actions

 

 

No 9Communication Quotes

Suit the action to the word, the word to the action

(Hamlet in Hamlet)

- William Shakespeare 1564–1616 English dramatist, pictured right.

 

 

No 10Communication Quotes

I disapprove of what you say but I will defend to the death your right to say it.

- Voltaire (1694-1778), French writer and philosopher, pictured right.

 Communication Quotes

Benedict (or Baruch) Spinoza (1632-77), pictured right. the Dutch philosopher, agrees:

Every man should think what he likes and say what he thinks,

 

 

No 11Communication Quotes

A memorandum is written not to inform the reader but to protect the writer.

- Dean Acheson (1893–1971) American politician, pictured right.

 

 

No 12

One picture is worth ten thousand words.

- Fred R. Barnard, American advertising manager.

 

 

No 13Communication Quotes

Words are cheap.

- Charlie Chaplin (1889–1977), English film star, pictured right.

 

 

No 14Communication Quotes

Why, a four-year-old child could understand this report. Run out and find me a four-year-old child. I can't make head or tail of it.

- Groucho Marx (1890-1977), American comedian (in the film Duck Soup), pictured right.

 

 

No 15Communication Quotes

Language is the dress of thought.

- Samuel Johnson (1709–84) English writer, pictured right.

 

 

No 16Communication Quotes

If…sometimes you need to conceal a fact with words, do it in such a way that it does not become known, or, if it does become known, that you have a ready and quick defence,

- Niccolò Machiavelli (1469–1527) Italian philosopher, pictured right.

 

 

 

No 17Communication Quotes

There are three kinds of lies: lies, damned lies and statistics.

- Benjamin Disraeli (1804-81), British prime minister, pictured right

 

 

 

No 18Communication Quotes

One’s feelings waste themselves in words. They ought to be distilled into actions and into actions which bring results.

- Florence Nightingale (1820-1910), pictured right, English nurse.

 

 

 

Communication Quotes

No 19

Deeds not words.

- the slogan of the British Suffragettes, pictured right.

 

So the American politician, philosopher and inventor, Benjamin Franklin (1706-90), pictured right below, says:Communication Quotes

Great talkers, little doers.

 

 

No 20Communication Quotes

You can detect an organization’s heart by looking at its language.

- Charles Handy, pictured right, in The Gods of Management (1985).

 

 

No 21Communication Quotes

You don’t understand something, unless you can explain it to your grandmother.

- Albert Einstein (1879-1955), German-born American scientist, pictured right.

 

Einstein also says:

Everything should be made as simple as possible but not simpler.

 

 

No 22Communication Quotes

Better to remain silent and be thought a fool than to speak and remove doubt.

- Abraham Lincoln (1809-65), pictured right, American president.

 

Communication Quotes

Mark Twain (1835-1910), the American writer, pictured right, agrees:

Better to keep your mouth shut and appear stupid than to open it and remove all doubt.

 

 

 

No 23Communication Quotes

To know what people really think, pay regard to what they do, rather than what they say.

- René Descartes (1596-1650), French philosopher, pictured right.

 

 

No 24Communication Quotes

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

- St. Francis of Assisi (1182-1226), Italian monk and philosopher, pictured right.

 Communication Quotes

Kahlil Gibran (1883-1931), the Lebanese-born American philosopher, pictured right, agrees:.

Let the spirit in you move your lips and direct your tongue.

 

 

Communication Quotes

No 25

I would have answered your letter sooner but you didn't send one.

- Goodman Ace (1899-1982), American writer (pictured right).

 

 

No 26Communication Quotes

Every word is a prejudice.

- Friedrich Nietzsche (1844-1900), German philosopher, pictured right.

 

 

No 27Communication Quotes

I have made this [letter] longer than usual, only because I have not had the time to make it shorter.

- Blaise Pascal (1623-62), French mathematician, physicist and philosopher, pictured right.

 

 

No 28Communication Quotes

No one is more hated than he who speaks the truth.

- Plato (427-347 BC), Greek philosopher, pictured right.

 

Plato also says:

Wise men talk because they have something to say; fools, because they have to say something,

 

 

No 29Communication Quotes

The oldest, shortest words— 'yes' and 'no'— are those which require the most thought.

- Pythagorus (c.570-495 BC), Greek philosopher and mathematician, pictured right.

 

 

No 30Communication Quotes

False words are not only evil in themselves, but they infect the soul with evil.

- Socrates (470-399 BC), Greek philosopher, pictured right.

 

 

No 31Communication Quotes

Don’t ask for the meaning, ask for the use.

- Ludwig Wittgenstein (1889-1951), Austrian-born British philosopher, pictured right.

 

 

No 32Communication Quotes

The only way to truly know a person is to argue with them...then they reveal their true character.

- Anne Frank (1929-1945), Jewish victim of the Holocaust, pictured right.

 

 

No 33Communication Quotes

I will not retreat a single inch – and I will be heard!

- William Lloyd Garrison (1805-79), American abolitionist, pictured right.

 

 

No 34Communication Quotes

Words ought to be a little wild, for they are the assault of thoughts upon the unthinking.

- John Maynard Keynes (1883-1946), English economist, pictured right.

 

 

No 35Communication Quotes

We must reinforce argument with results.

- Booker T. Washington (1856-1915), African American leader, pictured right.

 

 Cimmunication Quotes

The English writer and politician, C.P. Scott (1846-1932), pictured right, says that facts are also important:

Comment is free but facts are sacred.

 

 

No 36Communication Quotes

There is no worse lie than a truth misunderstood by those who hear it.

- William James (1842-1910), American psychologist and philosopher, pictured right.

 

 

No 37Communication Quotes

There are things the heart feels but which the tongue and even the mind cannot express.

- Thérèse of Lisieux (1873-97), French nun, pictured right.

 

 

No 38Communication Quotes

Nothing in this world is harder than speaking the truth, nothing easier than flattery.

(Svidrigailov in Crime and Punishment)

- Fyodor Dostoyevsky (1821-81), Russian writer, pictured right

 

 

No 39Communication Quotes

Words without thoughts never to heaven go.

(Claudius in Hamlet)

- William Shakespeare (1564-1616), English playwright, pictured right

 Brabantio in Shakespeares's Othelloalso comments:

Words are words. I never did hear that the bruised heart was pierced through the ear.

 

 

No 40Communication Quotes

 If you are ever at a loss to support a flagging conversation, introduce the subject of eating.

- Leigh Hunt (1784-1859), English writer, pictured right.

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