Communication Quotes

Reading communication quotes is a way to reflect and get inspired.

Some of the quotations included here are by people you'll know, some are by lesser known people. Each gives an insight beyond human communication, it lets us peek into the human soul.

When we read Henry Van Dyke's quote: "Use what talents you possess: the woods would be very silent if no birds sang there except those that sang best", it makes us think about the ultimate freedom of self-expression we all have.

As you read the list of quotes on communication, you may find that some of your favorite communication quotes are missing. Drop me a line so I can add them to this list of quotes.

This list includes not just communication quotes - those have the word communication in them - but also quotes that are about people connecting with each other: listening, silence, poetry, conflict, and so forth.

The quotes follow no rhyme or reason, they are just here to be enjoyed.

Communication Quotes

Any intelligent fool can make things bigger, more complex, and more violent. It takes a touch of genius - and a lot of courage - to move in the opposite direction. - Albert Einstein

 

Use what talents you possess: the woods would be very silent if no birds sang there except those that sang best. - Henry Van Dyke

 

If you don't ask, the answer is always no. - Tony Robbins

 

Soon silence will have passed into legend. Man has turned his back on silence. Day after day he invents machines and devices that increase noise and distract humanity from the essence of life, contemplation, meditation. - Jean Arp

 

A bird does not sing because it has an answer. It sings because it has a song. - Maya Angelou

 

The newest computer can merely compound, at speed, the oldest problem in the relations between human beings, and in the end the communicator will be confronted with the old problem, of what to say and how to say it. - Edward R. Murrow

 

Poetry: the best words in the best order. - Samuel Taylor Coleridge

 

It seems a long time since the morning mail could be called correspondence. - Jacques Barzun

 

Good communication is as stimulating as black coffee, and just as hard to sleep after. - Anne Morrow Lindbergh

 

To listen fully means to pay close attention to what is being said beneath the words. You listen not only to the 'music,' but to the essence of the person speaking. You listen not only for what someone knows, but for what he or she is. Ears operate at the speed of sound, which is far slower than the speed of light the eyes take in. Generative listening is the art of developing deeper silences in yourself, so you can slow our mind’s hearing to your ears’ natural speed, and hear beneath the words to their meaning. - Peter Senge

 

Genuine poetry can communicate before it is understood. - T.S. Eliot

 

Two monologues do not make a dialogue. - Jeff Daly

 

When the eyes say one thing, and the tongue another, a practiced man relies on the language of the first. - Ralph Waldo Emerson

 

Poetry is ordinary language raised to the Nth power. Poetry is boned with ideas, nerved and blooded with emotions, all held together by the delicate, tough skin of words. - Paul Engle

 

What you are stands over you the while and thunders so that I cannot hear what you say to the contrary. - Ralph Waldo Emerson

 

Big egos have little ears. - Robert Schuller

 

We dissect nature along lines laid down by our native language. Language is not simply a reporting device for experience but a defining framework for it. - Benjamin Whorf

 

The ability to speak eloquently is not to be confused with having something to say. - Michael P. Hart

 

Effective communication is 20% what you know and 80% how you feel about what you know. - Jim Rohn

 

Silence is argument carried out by other means. - Richard Flecknoe

 

The reality of the other person is not in what he reveals to you, but in what he cannot reveal to you. Therefore, if you would understand him, listen not to what he says but rather what he does not say. - Kahlil Gibran

 

The truth that survives is simply the lie that is pleasantest to believe. - H. L. Mencken

 

It’s good to shut up sometimes. - Marcel Marceau

 

The cruelest lies are often told in silence. - Robert Louis Stevenson

 

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

 

In the last analysis, what we are communicates far more eloquently than anything we say or do. - Stephen Covey