Virginia Satir Quotes

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

Avoid miscommunication. The price you pay for it is horrendous.

Sometimes, words are twisted and don't reach people in their intended way.

Is an intelligent human being likely to be much more than a large-scale manufacturer of misunderstanding?

Two people in a conversation amount to four people talking. The four are what one person says, what he really wanted to say, what his listener heard, and what he thought he heard.

There's all kinds of ways to be misunderstood, and one of them is via the interview.

If what is said does not concord with what was meant, what is to be done cannot be effected.

Any order that can be misunderstood, will be misunderstood

Most of the trouble in life comes from misunderstanding, I think,' said Anne.

We are often unable to tell people what they need to know, because they want to know something else, and would therefore only misunderstand what we said.

I tell ya, my wife was never nice. On our first date, I asked her if I could give her a goodnight kiss on the cheek - she bent over!

Listen to all the conversations of our world, between nations as well as between individuals. They are, for the most part, dialogues of the deaf.

As soon as we start putting our thoughts into words and sentences everything gets distorted, language is just no damn good—I use it because I have to, but I don’t put any trust in it. We never understand each other.

There,” she said triumphantly. “Like that.” He began to wonder if they were speaking the same language. “Like what?” “That! What you just said.” He crossed his arms. It seemed the only acceptable reply. If she couldn’t speak in complete sentences, he saw no reason why he had to speak at all.

We're all islands shouting lies to each other across seas of misunderstanding.

Between what I think, what I want to say, what I believe I say, what I say, what you want to hear, what you believe to hear, what you hear, what you want to understand, what you think you understand, what you understand...They are ten possibilities that we might have some problem communicating. But let's try anyway...

The surest sign of the estrangement of the opinions of two persons is when they both say something ironical to each other and neither of them feels the irony.

The surest sign that two people no longer speak the same language is that both say ironic things to one another but that neither senses the irony.

Who would have thought that a means of communication limited to 140 characters would ever create misunderstanding?

Just because I didn't do what you told me, doesn't mean I wasn't listening to you!

The medium obscured the message.

The void created by the failure to communicate is soon filled with poison, drivel and misrepresentation.

... when we are misunderstood it is always our own fault. What the reader wants most of all is to be able to grasp what we think; but you loftily refuse to comply.

I think, in general, it's clear that most bad things come from misunderstanding, and communication is generally the way to resolve misunderstandings - and the Web's a form of communications - so it generally should be good.

You have to put up with the risk of being misunderstood if you are going to try to communicate.