Communication Dynamics Quotes

If a boy, if a man, asks you if you're all right and you say yes, he'll always believe you and get on with what he wants to do. It's just the way they're made.

The resentment that criticism engenders can demoralize employees, family members and friends, and still not correct the situation that has been condemned.

Language is power, life and the instrument of culture, the instrument of domination and liberation.

Words are also actions, and actions are a kind of words.

My philosophy is that every phone conversation has a loser.

Those who talk loudly are rarely listened to.

People around me never say anything. They just seem to want to hear what I have to say. That's why I do all the talking.

The nature of bad news affects the teller.

The philosophers are wrong: it is not words that kill, it is silence.

Whereas a lot of men used to ask for conversation when they really wanted sex, nowadays they often feel obliged to ask for sex even when they really want conversation.

Being interviewed is one of the most abnormal things that you can do to somebody else. It's two steps removed from the Inquisition.

I assume that the proper study of interaction is not the individual and his psychology, but rather the syntactical relations among the acts of different persons mutually present to another.

Whomever speaks first gives up some power.

Mother,” Hyacinth said with a great show of solicitude, “you know I love you dearly—” “Why is it,” Violet pondered, “that I have come to expect nothing good when I hear a sentence beginning in that manner?

Television itself is an intimate medium. It's in your house. You're visiting with these people... Not everybody's going to like it, just like not everybody likes everybody on the playground. I mean, that's life - especially if your job is to just go out there and be yourself.

How is Eric?' 'Very tightly wound. Plus, a lot of stuff happened that he'll tell you about.' 'Thanks for the warning. I'll go to the house now. You're my favorite breather.' 'Oh. Well ... great.' She hung up.

Somebody has to have the last word. If not, every argument could be opposed by another and we'd never be done with it.

- No, no... She shook her head for emphasis. No. His lips twitched. - One 'no' is enough, darling.

Love and trust, in the space between what’s said and what’s heard in our life, can make all the difference in the world.

It is true that words have power, and one of the things they are able to do is get out of someone’s mouth before the speaker has the chance to stop them.

Once a human being has arrived on this earth, communication is the largest single factor determining what kinds of relationships he makes with others and what happens to him in the world about him.

It is just as likely that as I invent what I want to say, you will invent what you want to hear.

If I'm at somebody's house and they have magazines on the table and people are chatting, I feel almost a physical urge to start reading the magazines instead of talking to people.

Mr. Thornton felt that in this influx no one was speaking to Margaret, and was restless under this apparent neglect. But he never went near her himself; he did not look at her. Only, he knew what she was doing — or not doing — better than anyone else in the room. Margaret was so unconscious of herself, and so much amused by watching other people, that she never thought whether she was left unnoticed or not.

I love studying how people are. Not just what they're saying, but how they are, what they're doing.