3,244 Quotes About Communication

It had felt like the first deep breath I'd ever taken, to tell him everything, to hear his half of it all, then hold them up together to find they fit like two pieces of cracked pottery.

When it comes to language, we're all wired the same. Humans havepretty much the same intuitions about the same kinds of phenomena inlots and lots of different languages. If I say "You that look understandidea can," you have a very different intuition than if I say "Look, youcan understand that idea,"even though the words are the same. There'sa part of you at the unconscious level that tells you that one of thosesentences is well-formed in a way that the other is not.

My understanding is that languageis the accumulated wisdom of a group of people. Out of a potentiallyinfinite amount of sensory experience, language picks out those thingswhich are repetitive in the experience of the people developing thelanguage and that they have found useful to attend to in consciousness.

If I use any words that don't have direct sensory referents, the onlyway you can understand those—unless you have some program todemand more sensory-based descriptions—is for you to find thecounterpart in your past experience.

There's an illusionthat people understand each other when they can repeat the samewords. But since those words internally access different experiences—which they must—then there's always going to be a difference inmeaning.

I truly admire the British for their subtle sarcasm. A good rule when using sarcasm is, it is best to "put a little English" on it.

Pseudocommunity is conflict-avoiding: true community is conflict-resolving.

I feel it in my bones now,time slowly slipping away.An urgency is building,to say all I didn't or couldn't say.I feel the need to pass on,the lantern of my life.Perhaps you may gain something,to help you through some strife.(excerpt from the poem: "I feel it in my bones")

All translation is mistranslation. But maybe there should be a second part to that phrase. All conversation is misunderstanding. I think about the discrepancies that will always exist in the gaps between languages whenever I go anywhere outside Japan, anywhere where Japanese, my native language, isn’t spoken. But even when I use my native language, the same thing does apply. All language is misunderstanding. In degrees.