Communication quotes

The most important persuasion tool you have in your entire arsenal is integrity.

The quality of your life is the quality of your communication.

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.

You can make more friends in two months by becoming interested in other people than you can in two years by trying to get other people interested in you.

When dealing with people, let us remember we are not dealing with creatures of logic. We are dealing with creatures of emotion.

Remember that a person's name is to that person the sweetest and most important sound in any language.

Begin with praise and honest appreciation.

Monotony is poverty, whether in speech or in life.

Most people do not listen with the intent to understand; they listen with the intent to reply.

Seek first to understand, then to be understood.

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

Prepare your mind and heart before you prepare your speech. What we say may be less important than how we say it.

Shame hates to have words wrapped around it. If we talk about it, it loses its grip on us.

Clear is kind. Unclear is unkind.

Very few people or companies can clearly articulate WHY they do WHAT they do.

Content is king, but context is God.

A person's success in life can usually be measured by the number of uncomfortable conversations he or she is willing to have.

Discourage litigation. Persuade your neighbors to compromise whenever you can. Point out to them how the nominal winner is often a real loser, in fees, expenses, and waste of time.

It is better to offer no excuse than a bad one.

There is not a truth existing which I fear or would wish unknown to the whole world.

Repetition does not transform a lie into a truth.

Be sincere, be brief, be seated.

Let us never negotiate out of fear. But let us never fear to negotiate.

May we never confuse honest dissent with disloyal subversion.

Peace is not the absence of conflict, but the ability to cope with conflict by peaceful means.

When they go low, we go high.

Broadly speaking, short words are best, and the old words, when short, are best of all.

If you want to make peace with your enemy, you have to work with your enemy. Then he becomes your partner.

To suppress free speech is a double wrong. It violates the rights of the hearer as well as those of the speaker.

Fight for the things that you care about, but do it in a way that will lead others to join you.

Dissents speak to a future age.

We realise the importance of light when we see darkness. We realise the importance of our voice when we are silenced.

If A is success in life, then A = x + y + z. Work is x, play is y and z is keeping your mouth shut.

Truth is ever to be found in simplicity, and not in the multiplicity and confusion of things.

The scientists of today think deeply instead of clearly. One must be sane to think clearly, but one can think deeply and be quite insane.

For a successful technology, reality must take precedence over public relations, for nature cannot be fooled.

Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence.

Books break the shackles of time. A book is proof that humans are capable of working magic.

Names and attributes must be accommodated to the essence of things, and not the essence to the names, since things come first and names afterwards.

Change happens by listening and then starting a dialogue with the people who are doing something you don't believe is right.

Some of the greatest poetry is revealing to the reader the beauty in something that was so simple you had taken it for granted.

Reprove your friend in secret and praise him openly.

Any one can get angry, that is easy... but to do this to the right person, to the right extent, at the right time, with the right motive, and in the right way, that is not for every one, nor is it easy.

There is no greater evil one can suffer than to hate reasonable discourse.

The superior man is modest in his speech, but exceeds in his actions.

He who knows does not speak; he who speaks does not know.

If it is not right, do not do it; if it is not true, do not say it.

To subdue the enemy without fighting is the acme of skill.

The secret of being a bore is to tell everything.

Be scrupulously truthful, even if the truth is inconvenient, for it is more inconvenient when you try to conceal it.

People are generally better persuaded by the reasons which they have themselves discovered than by those which have come into the mind of others.

The last thing one settles in writing a book is what one should put in first.

I would have written a shorter letter, but I did not have the time.

Criticize by category, praise by name.

The consumer isn't a moron; she is your wife.

Never write an advertisement which you wouldn't want your own family to read.

On the average, five times as many people read the headline as read the body copy.

Unless your advertising contains a big idea, it will pass like a ship in the night.

When I write an advertisement, I don't want you to tell me that you find it 'creative.' I want you to find it so interesting that you buy the product.

Viewers have a way of remembering the celebrity while forgetting the product.

At 60 miles an hour the loudest noise in this new Rolls-Royce comes from the electric clock.

Whatever anybody says or does, assume positive intent.

If we start acknowledging what the real issues are, we can solve them. It's not that hard.

Listen to everyone in your company. And figure out ways to get them talking.

Telephone, telegraph, tell a woman.

The difference between the almost right word and the right word is really a large matter, 'tis the difference between the lightning-bug and the lightning.

Get your facts first, and then you can distort them as much as you please.

There is only one thing in the world worse than being talked about, and that is not being talked about.

The truth is rarely pure and never simple.

Brevity is the soul of wit.

All you have to do is write one true sentence. Write the truest sentence you know.

We die. That may be the meaning of life. But we do language. That may be the measure of our lives.

Definitions belonged to the definers, not the defined.

Grown-ups never understand anything by themselves, and it is tiresome for children to be always and forever explaining things to them.

If liberty means anything at all, it means the right to tell people what they do not want to hear.

Never use a long word where a short one will do.

If it is possible to cut a word out, always cut it out.

Music expresses that which cannot be said and on which it is impossible to be silent.

No matter what, people are going to like you or not like you. So be authentic, and let them like you or not for who you actually are.

Poetry surrounds us everywhere, but putting it on paper is, alas, not so easy as looking at it.

If you want to make a recipe for making a writer, have them feel a little out of place everywhere, have them be an observer kind of all the time.

People have forgotten how to tell a story.