The world would be happier if men had the same capacity to be silent that they have to speak.

- Baruch Spinoza

The most basic and powerful way to connect to another person is to listen. Just listen. Perhaps the most important thing we ever give each other is our attention.... A loving silence often has far more power to heal and to connect than the most well-intentioned words.

- Rachel Naomi Remen

Every criticism, judgment, diagnosis, and expression of anger is the tragic expression of an unmet need.

- Marshall Rosenberg

"What will they think of me?" must be put aside for bliss.

- Joseph Campbell

[A]ll change, even very large and powerful change, begins when a few people start talking with one another about something they care about.

- Margaret J. Wheatley

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

- Francis of Assisi

You can't make your kids do anything. All you can do is make them wish they had. And then, they will make you wish you hadn't made them wish they had.

- Marshall Rosenberg

Live truth instead of expressing it.

- Elbert Hubbard

Perhaps the most important thing we bring to another person is the silence in us, not the sort of silence that is filled with unspoken criticism or hard withdrawal. The sort of silence that is a place of refuge, of rest, of acceptance of someone as they are. We are all hungry for this other silence. It is hard to find. In its presence we can remember something beyond the moment, a strength on which to build a life. Silence is a place of great power and healing.

- Rachel Naomi Remen

True eloquence consists in saying all that is necessary, and nothing but what is necessary.

- Heinrich Heine

There is an endless net of threads throughout the universe...
At every crossing of the threads there is an individual.
And every individual is a crystal bead.
And every crystal bead reflects
Not only the light from every other crystal in the net
But also every other reflection
Throughout the entire universe.

an adaptation of The Net of Jewels, or Indra's Net, one of the oldest written creations of humanity

- Anne Adams

The biggest mistake is believing there is one right way to listen, to talk, to have a conversation -- or a relationship.

- Deborah Tannen

Think like a wise man but communicate in the language of the people.

- William Butler Yeats

Sometimes there is a greater lack of communication in facile talking than in silence.

- Faith Baldwin

The single biggest problem in communication is the illusion that it has taken place.

- George Bernard Shaw

I'm a great believer that any tool that enhances communication has profound effects in terms of how people can learn from each other, and how they can achieve the kind of freedoms that they're interested in.

- Bill Gates



There are two barriers that often prevent communication between the young and their elders. The first is middle-aged forgetfulness of the fact that they themselves are no longer young. The second is youthful ignorance of the fact that the middle aged are still alive.

- Jessamyn West



The most important things are the hardest to say, because words diminish them.

- Stephen King



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

- Ernest Hemingway



Yet, in spite of this world-wide system of linkages, there is, at this very moment, a general feeling that communication is breaking down everywhere, on an unparalleled scale.

- David Bohm



Communication is a skill that you can learn. It's like riding a bicycle or typing. If you're willing to work at it, you can rapidly improve the quality of every part of your life.

- Brian Tracy



We are more connected than ever before, more able to spread our ideas and beliefs, our anger and fears. As we exercise the right to advocate our views, and as we animate our supporters, we must all assume responsibility for our words and actions before they enter a vast echo chamber and reach those both serious and delirious, connected and unhinged.

- Bill Clinton



Civilization grew in the beginning from the minute that we had communication -- particularly communication by sea that enabled people to get inspiration and ideas from each other and to exchange basic raw materials.

- Thor Heyerdahl



There's no use talking about the problem unless you talk about the solution.

- Betty Williams



Bad human communication leaves us less room to grow.

- Rowan D. Williams



Talking is like playing on the harp; there is as much in laying the hands on the strings to stop their vibration as in twanging them to bring out their music.

- Oliver Wendell Holmes



The way we communicate with others and with ourselves ultimately determines the quality of our lives.

- Anthony Robbins



But behavior in the human being is sometimes a defense, a way of concealing motives and thoughts, as language can be a way of hiding your thoughts and preventing communication.

- Abraham Maslow



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



When you have nothing to say, say nothing.

- Charles Caleb Colton



If we try to listen we find it extraordinarily difficult, because we are always projecting our opinions and ideas, our prejudices, our background, our inclinations, our impulses; when they dominate, we hardly listen at all to what is being said.... One listens and therefore learns, only in a state of silence, in which this whole background is in abeyance, is quite; then, it seems to me, it is possible to communicate.

- Jiddu Krishnamurti



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



The key to conversation at work is flexibility and understanding how what you say might be perceived by others.

- Deborah Tannen



A flourishing, morally credible media is a vital component in the maintenance of genuinely public talk, argument about common good.

- Rowan D. Williams



To effectively communicate, we must realize that we are all different in the way we perceive the world and use this understanding as a guide to our communication with others.

- Tony Robbins



I know that you believe you understand what you think I said, but I'm not sure you realize that what you heard is not what I meant.

- Robert McCloskey



To listen well is as powerful a means of communication and influence as to talk well.

- John Marshall



Jaw jaw is better than war war.

- Winston Churchill



People change and forget to tell each other.

- Lillian Hellman



Men and women belong to different species and communications between them is still in its infancy.

- Bill Cosby



Technique is communication: the two words are synonymous in conductors.

- Leonard Bernstein



One of the hardest things in life is having words in your heart that you can't utter.

- James Earl Jones



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

- Plato



Generally speaking, the first nonviolent act is not fasting, but dialogue. The other side, the adversary, is recognized as a person, he is taken out of his anonymity and exists in his own right, for what he really is, a person. To engage someone in dialogue is to recognize him, have faith in him. At every step in the nonviolent struggle, at every level we try tirelessly to establish a dialogue, or reestablish it if it has broken down. When I say 'the other side,' that could be a group of persons or a government.

- Hildegard Goos-Mayr



Inject a few raisins of conversation into the tasteless dough of existence.

- O. Henry