Quotations about Communication



Elegance of language may not be in the power of all of us; but simplicity and straight forwardness are. Write much as you would speak; speak as you think. If with your inferior, speak no coarser than usual; if with your superiors, no finer. Be what you say; and, within the rules of prudence, say what you are.

–– Alford


I have often regretted my speech, never my silence.

–– Anonymous

The only weapon that becomes sharper with constant use is the tongue.

–– Anonymous

There's nothing wrong with having nothing to say –– unless you insist on saying it.

–– Anonymous

The best time to hold your tongue is the time you feel you must say something or bust.

–– Josh Billings

The true spirit of conversation consists in building on another man's observation, not overturning it.

–– Edward Bulwer-Lytton

I have noticed that nothing I have never said ever did me any harm.

–– Calvin Coolidge

Honest disagreement is often a good sign of progress.

–– Gandhi

Silence is argument carried out by other means.

–– Ernesto "Che" Guevara

When people talk, listen completely. Most people never listen.

–– Ernest Hemingway


The only way to entertain some folks is to listen to them.

–– Kin Hubbard

Silence is as full of potential wisdom and wit as the unhewn marble of a great sculpture.

–– Aldous Huxley

Value your words. Each one may be the last.

–– Stanislaw J. Lec

I feel that if a person has problems communicating the very least he can do is to shut up.

–– Tom Lehrer

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

–– Abraham Lincoln


Tact is the ability to describe others as they see themselves.

–– Abraham Lincoln


Good communication is as stimulating as black coffee, and just as hard to sleep after.

–– Anne Morrow Lindbergh





No one really listens to anyone else, and if you try it for a while you'll see why.

–– Mignon McLaughlin





He who knows only his own side of the case, knows little of that.

–– John Stuart Mill





We can never be sure that the opinion we are endeavoring to stifle is a false opinion; and if we were sure, stifling it would be an evil still.

–– John Stuart Mill





Kind words can be short and easy to speak, but their echoes are truly endless.

–– Mother Teresa





It was the greatest of the imperfect ventriloquist acts: when his lips moved, her body sang.

–– Tom Robbins





The trouble with her is that she lacks the power of conversation but not the power of speech.

–– George Bernard Shaw





He had occasional flashes of silence that made his conversation perfectly delightful.

–– Sydney Smith, referring to Macaulay





If other people are going to talk, conversation becomes impossible.

–– James McNeill Whistler

Conversation, fastidious Goddess, loves blood better than brick, and feasts most subtly on the human will.

–– Virginia Woolf, Mrs. Dalloway