Quotes & Sayings About Language And Communication

In a society so estranged from animals as ours, we often fail to credit them with any form of language. If we do, it comes under the heading of communication rather than speech. And yet, the great silence we have imposed on the rest of life contains innumerable forms of expression. Where does our own language come from but this unfathomed store that characterizes innumerable species?
We are now more than halfway removed from what the unwritten word meant to our ancestors, who believed in the original, primal word behind all manifestations of the spirit. You sang because you were answered. The answers come from life around you. Prayers, chants, and songs were also responses to the elements, to the wind, the sun and stars, the Great Mystery behind them. Life on earth springs from a collateral magic that we rarely consult. We avoid the unknown as if we were afraid that contact would lower our sense of self-esteem. — John Hay

What a dead thing is a clock, with its ponderous embowelments of lead and brass, its pert or solemn dullness of communication, compared with the simple altar-like structure and silent heart-language of the old sundials! It stood as the garden god of Christian gardens. Why is it almost everywhere vanished? If its business-use be superseded by more elaborate inventions, its moral uses, its beauty, might have pleaded for its continuance. — Charles Lamb

Living in Supreme Influence, your language is neutral and/or moving toward your vision rather than moving away. In other words, you speak about what you do want, not about what you don't want. — Niurka

What I try to get beyond is playing music at people and, instead, to play music with people because audience members are constantly part of the experience. What they say in their body language, what they say in their eyes, what they sing with me ... it's an 'us,' and there's a communication that's like ... it's like church, man. — Al Jarreau

Language is the amber in which a thousand precious and subtle thoughts have been safely embedded and preserved. It has arrested ten thousand lightning flashes of genius, which, unless thus fixed and arrested, might have been as bright, but would have also been as quickly passing and perishing, as the lightning. — Richard Chenevix Trench

Since every school in India teaches English, why can't it be our link language? Why do Tamils have to study English for communication with the world and Hindi for communications within India? Do we need a big door for the big dog and a small door for the small dog? I say, let the small dog use the big door too! — C. N. Annadurai

On the other hand, in a society whose communication component is becoming more prominent day by day, both as a reality and as an issue, it is clear that language assumes a new importance. — Jean-Francois Lyotard

This language is from the head. It is a way of mentally classifying people into varying shades of good and bad, right and wrong. Ultimately, it provokes defensiveness, resistance, and counterattack. It is a language of demands. — Marshall B. Rosenberg

Guys get a bad rap for not wanting to talk about their feelings but maybe women are in part to blame for that. One thing that I learned from working with people where English was not their first language was this: just because they don't speak your language doesn't mean that they're dumb. Maybe we just need to talk more slowly, use simpler words and have lots more patience. — Dermot Davis

Music can make a difference. There is a global nature to music, which has the potential to bring all people together. Music is truly an international language, and I hope to contribute by widening communication as much as I can. — Marvin Hamlisch

Evolution teaches us the original purpose of language was to ritualize men's threats and curses, his spells to compel the gods; communication came later. — Gene Wolfe

In addition to Ameslan, chimpanzees and other nonhuman primates are being taught a variety of other gestural languages. And it is just this transition from tongue to hand that has permitted humans to regain the ability-lost, according to Josephus, since Eden-to communicate with the animals. — Carl Sagan

I stress the expansion and elaboration of language. In simplifying it, reducing it, we reduce the power of our expression and our power to communicate. Standardization, the use of worn-out formulas, impedes communication because it does not match the subtlety of our minds or emotions, the multimedia of our unconscious life. — Anais Nin

I think we can learn a lot about a person in the very moment that language fails them. In the very moment they they have to be more creative than they would have imagined in order to communicate. It's the very moment that they have to dig deeper than the surface to find words, and at the same time, it's a moment when they want to communicate very badly. They're digging deep and projecting out at the same time. — Anna Deavere Smith

As the language areas of the left hemisphere enter their sensitive period during the middle of the second year of life, grammatical language in the left integrates with the interpersonal and prosodic elements of communication already well developed in the right. As the cortical language centers mature, words are joined together to make sentences and can be used to express increasingly complex ideas flavored with emotion. As the frontal cortex continues to expand and connect with more neural networks, memory improves and a sense of time slowly emerges and autobiographical memory begins to connect the self with places and events, within and across time. The emerging narratives begin to organize the nascent sense of self and become the bedrock of our sense of self in interpersonal and physical space — Louis Cozolino

There is nothing quite as destructive to the gospel of Jesus Christ as the use of language that dismisses the way Jesus talks and prays and takes up instead the rhetoric of smiling salesmanship or vicious invective. — Eugene H. Peterson

Any language is necessarily a finite system applied with different degrees of creativity to an infinite variety of situations, and most of the words and phrases we use are "prefabricated" in the sense that we don't coin new ones every time we speak. — David Lodge

As well as being the banners and ensigns of human groups, languages guard our memories too. Even when they are unwritten, languages are the most powerful tools we have to conserve our past knowledge, transmitting it, ever and anon, to the next generation. Any human language binds together a human community, by giving it a network of communication; but it also dramatizes it, providing the means to tell, and to remember, its stories. — Nicholas Ostler

In an age when other fantastically speedy, widespread media are triumphing, and running the risk of flattening all communication onto a single homogeneous surface, the function of literature is communication between things that are different simply because they are different, not blunting but even sharpening the differences between them, following the true bent of written language. — Italo Calvino

We are a unique ape. We have language. Other animals have systems of communication that fall far short of that. They don't have the same ability to communicate complicated conditionals and what-ifs and talk about things that are not present. — Richard Dawkins

Lacking a shared language, emotions are perhaps our most effective means of cross-species communication. We can share our emotions, we can understand the language of feelings, and that's why we form deep and enduring social bonds with many other beings. Emotions are the glue that binds. — Marc Bekoff

Not only is the Universe aware of us, but it also communicates with us. We, in turn, are constantly in communication with the Universe through our words, thoughts, and actions. The Universe responds with events. Events are the language of the Universe. The most obvious of those events are what we call coincidence. — Chris Prentiss

UCLA psychology professor emeritus Albert Mehrabian discovered that face-to-face communication can be broken down into three components: words, tone of voice, and body language. — John C. Maxwell

Let me just acknowlege that the function of grammar is to make language as efficent and clear and transparent as possible. But if we're all constantly correcting each other's grammar and being really snotty about it, then people stop talking because they start to be petrified that they're going to make some sort of terrible grammatical error and that's precisely the opposite of what grammar is supposed to do, which is to facilitate clear communication. — John Green

When men learnt to talk in the beginning of the civilised word they used language not as a means of communication alone but as a means of excluding others
using it as a way of setting themselves apart and shutting out strangers. — Charlotte Lamb

Language furnishes the best proof that a law accepted by a community is a thing that is tolerated and not a rule to which all freely consent. — Ferdinand De Saussure

NVC is founded on language and communication skills that strengthen our ability to remain human, even under trying conditions. — Marshall B. Rosenberg

The planet has a kind of intelligence, it can actually open a channel of communication with an individual human being. The message that nature sends is, transform your language through a synergy between electronic culture and the psychedelic imagination, a synergy between dance and idea, a synergy between understanding and intuition, and dissolve the boundaries that your culture has sanctioned between you, to become part of this Gaian supermind — Terence McKenna

What said those two souls communicating through the language of the eyes, more perfect than that of the lips, the language given to the soul in order that sound may not mar the ecstasy of feeling? In such moments, when the thoughts of two happy beings penetrate into each other's souls through the eyes, the spoken word is halting, rude, and weak - it is as the harsh, slow roar of the thunder compared with the rapidity of the dazzling lightning flash, expressing feelings already recognized, ideas already understood, and if words are made use of it is only because the heart's desire, dominating all the being and flooding it with happiness, wills that the whole human organism with all its physical and psychical powers give expression to the song of joy that rolls through the soul. To the questioning glance of love, as it flashes out and then conceals itself, speech has no reply; the smile, the kiss, the sigh answer. — Jose Rizal

Meanwhile, the poor Babel fish, by effectively removing all barriers to communication between different races and cultures, has caused more and bloodier wars than anything else in the history of creation. — Douglas Adams

Beneath the uniformity that unites us in communication there is a chaotic personal diversity of connections, and, for each of us, the connections continue to evolve. No two of us learn our language alike, nor, in a sense, does any finish learning it while he lives. — Willard Van Orman Quine

My God! The English language is a form of communication! Conversation isn't just crossfire where you shoot and get shot at! Where you've got to duck for your life and aim to kill! Words aren't only bombs and bullets - no, they're little gifts, containing meanings! — Philip Roth

To make biological survival possible, Mind at Large has to be funnelled through the reducing valve of the brain and nervous system. What comes out at the other end is a measly trickle of the kind of consciousness which will help us to stay alive on the surface of this particular planet. To formulate and express the contents of this reduced awareness, man has invented and endlessly elaborated those symbol-systems and implicit philosophies which we call languages. Every individual is at once the beneficiary and the victim of the linguistic tradition into which he or she has been born
the beneficiary inasmuch as language gives access to he accumulated records of other people's experience, the victim in so far as it confirms him in the belief that reduced awareness is the only awareness and as it be-devils his sense of reality, so that he is all too apt to take his concepts for data, his words for actual things. — Aldous Huxley

The language of digital communication is a language we don't understand in a way. People say the internet is like the Wild West in that it's lawless and we haven't worked out how to make it structured or moral. — Tom Hiddleston

The powerful notion of entropy, which comes from a very special branch of physics ... is certainly useful in the study of communication and quite helpful when applied in the theory of language. — J. Robert Oppenheimer

Would the Gardners and the workers at the Yerkes Primate Center be remembered dimly as legendary folk heroes or gods of another species? Would there be myths, like those of Prometheus, Thoth, or Cannes, about divine beings who had given the gift of language to the apes? — Carl Sagan

Great communication depends on two simple skills-context, which attunes a leader to the same frequency as his or her audience, and delivery, which allows a leader to phrase messages in a language the audience can understand. — John C. Maxwell

More than the divides of race, class, or gender, more than rural or urban, believer or nonbeliever, red state or blue state, our culture has been carved up into radically distinct, unbridgeable, and antagonistic entities that no longer speak the same language and cannot communicate. This is the divide between a literate, marginalized minority and those who have been consumed by an illiterate mass culture. — Chris Hedges

The Internet," [Judy] Singer said, "is a prosthetic device for people who can't socialize without it." For anyone challenged by language and social rules, a communication system that does not operate in real time is a godsend. — Andrew Solomon

Spoken language clearly differentiates Homo sapiens from all other creatures. None but humankind produces a complex spoken language, a medium for communication and a medium for introspective reflection. — Richard Leakey

Yes, but bad language is bound to make in addition bad government, whereas good language is not bound to make bad government. That again is clear Confucius: if the orders aren't clear they can't be carried out. Lloyd George's laws were such a mess, the lawyers never knew what they meant. And Talleyrand proclaimed that they changed the meaning of words between one conference and another. The means of communication breaks down, and that of course is what we are suffering now. We are enduring the drive to work on the subconscious without appealing to the reason. They repeat a trade name with the music a few times, and then repeat the music without it so that the music will give you the name. I think of the assault. We suffer from the use of language to conceal thought and to withhold all vital and direct answers. There is the definite use of propaganda, forensic language, merely to conceal and mislead. — Ezra Pound

Language is the biggest barrier to human progress because language is an encyclopedia of ignorance. Old perceptions are frozen into language and force us to look at the world in an old fashioned way. — Edward De Bono

Language has everything to do with oppression and liberation. When the word "victory" means conquer vs. harmony and the word "equality" means homogenization vs. unity in/through diversity, then the liberation of a people from a "minority" class to "communal stakeholders" becomes much more difficult. Oppression has deep linguistic roots. We see it in conversations which interchange the idea of struggle with suffering in order to normalize abuse. We are the creators of our language, and our definitions shape the perceptions we have of the world. The first step to ending oppression is finding a better method of communication which is not solely dependent on a language rooted in the ideology of oppressive structures. — Cristina Marrero

Identifying body language changes connected with the conversation in hand gives us insights into their thoughts and emotions. — Sam Owen

I grunted. It's something I picked up over a fifteen-year career in law enforcement. Men have managed to create a complex and utterly impenetrable secret language consisting of monosyllabic sounds and partial words - and they are apparently too thick to realize it exists. Maybe they really are from Mars. I'd been able to learn a few Martian phrases over time, and one of the useful ones was the grunt that meant I acknowledge that I've heard what you said; please continue. — Jim Butcher

Teacher, school administrators and parents will come away from Life-Enriching Education with skills in language, communication, and ways of structuring the learning environment that support the development of autonomy and interdependence in the classroom. — Marshall B. Rosenberg

Everybody seemed to like Skype except him, Tony thought, closing his office door then settling in front of his screen. His dislike was both personal and professional. Everybody looked weird on Skype. Everyone, frankly, looked like a potential patient. There was something very unsettling about that fish-eyed stare. Even people he liked looked deranged. From a professional perspective, the trouble was you could never see enough of the person you were in conversation with to gauge their body language. They might be giving off all sort of signals you'd be aware of in what his boss had taken to calling "F2F encounters," but the Skype interface could hide a multitude of clues. — Val McDermid

They must talk to each other directly, Ender, mind to mind. What one thinks, another can also think; what one remembers, another can also re-member. Why would they ever develop language? Why would they ever learn to read and write? How would they know what reading and writing were if they saw them? Or signals? Or numbers? Or anything that we use to communicate? This isn't just a matter of translating from one language to another. They don't have a language at all. We used every means we could think of to communicate with them, but they don't even have the machinery to know we're signaling. And maybe they've been trying to think to us, and they can't understand why we don't respond. — Orson Scott Card

Maybe this was a male-female translation problem. I read an article once that said that when women have a conversation, they're communicating on five levels. They follow the conversation that they're actually having, the conversation that is specifically being avoided, the tone being applied to the overt conversation, the buried conversation that is being covered only in subtext, and finally the other person's body language.
That is, on many levels, astounding to me. I mean, that's like having a freaking superpower. When I, and most other people with a Y chromosome, have a conversation, we're having a conversation. Singular. We're paying attention to what is being said, considering that, and replying to it. All these other conversations that have apparently been going on for the last several thousand years? I didn't even know that they ~existed~ until I read that stupid article, and I'm pretty sure I'm not the only one. — Jim Butcher

Humans are so innately hardwired for language that they can no more suppress their ability to learn and use language than they can suppress the instinct to pull a hand back from a hot surface. — Steven Pinker

A man's power to connect his thought with its proper symbol, and so to utter it, depends on the simplicity of his character, that is, upon his love of truth, and his desire to communicate it without loss. — Ralph Waldo Emerson

Typography is what communication looks like.
There is beauty in the language and beauty in the way it is presented. — James Felici

We are at the cusp of another big evolutionary change. Something that happens only every hundred of thousands of years. Everything about humanity as we know and understand it, everything we learned about how to be successful in the world, is based on the species Homo sapiens that's been in existence for 150,000 years. Around 85,000 years ago their communication ability reached a stage in its development, with the mutation of the dropping of the larynx and the full mental potential, which allowed the development of language, which in turn made mind possible. If you don't have language, you can't think, you can't develop strategies. — Steve Rhodes

Prose - it might be speculated - is discourse; poetry ellipsis. Prose is spoken aloud; poetry overheard. The one is presumably articulate and social, a shared language, the voice of "communication"; the other is private, allusive, teasing, sly, idiosyncratic as the spider's delicate web, a kind of witchcraft unfathomable to ordinary minds. — Joyce Carol Oates

Body language speaks much more succinctly and honestly than mere spoken words. — Dixie Waters

The purpose of language is to facilitate expression and communication, not to altogether define or contain them. — Jennifer Hamady

Meaning is made in conversation, reality is created in communication, and knowledge is generated through social interaction ... Language is the vehicle through which we create our understanding of the world. — Diana Whitney

All that has been integrated into NVC has been known for centuries about consciousness, language, communication skills, and use of power that enable us to maintain a perspective of empathy for ourselves and others, even under trying conditions. — Marshall B. Rosenberg

What is said determines who listens and who understands. Graphic design is a language, but graphic designers are so busy worrying about the nuances - accents, punctuation and so on - that they spend little time thinking about what the words add up to. I'm interested in using our communication skills to change the way things are. — Tibor Kalman

But behavior in the human being is sometimes a defense, a way of concealing motives and thoughts, as language can be a way of hiding your thoughts and preventing communication. — Abraham Maslow

A language is a means of communication and should be lived rather than taught. — Benny Lewis

In Nonviolent Communication you will find an amazingly effective language for saying what's on your mind and in your heart. Like so many essential and elegant systems, it's simple on the surface, challenging to use in the heat of the moment and powerful in its results. — Vicki Robin

When language is used without true significance, it loses its purpose as a means of communication and becomes an end in itself. — Karl Jaspers

When you speak in other tongues, no one understands what you're saying, because you're speaking to God. It's a direct communication between your spirit and God. You're speaking the language that only He understands. — Chris Oyakhilome

So much of language is unspoken. So much of language is compromised of looks and gestures and sounds that are not words. People are ignorant of the vast complexity of their own communication. — Garth Stein

Humans are a social species more than any other, and in order to build a community, which for some reason humans have to do in order to live, we have to solve the communication problem. Language is the tool that was invented to solve that problem. — Daniel Everett

The English Language is a form of communication! Words aren't only bombs and bullets - no, they're little gifts, containing meanings. What is true in love, is equally true at law — Phillip Roth

When we miss the meaning of a language, we miss the real essence and impact of communication. If we lose the real meaning of a language, we lose the real understanding of a language. Friendship is developed and nurtured through effective communication and that is the great tool that shapes friendship. A good communication, regardless of how short it might be is a great litmus paper that proves who a true friend or false friend is. A good communication does not only trigger the best bond but it also uncovers things in the heart that are hidden from the eyes. Without an effective communication, real friendship and real love between two great people is just like two great mountains with a valley between them. Without communication, we lose what we could have heard from real people. When we miss the meaning of a language, we miss the real essence and impact of communication!!! — Ernest Agyemang Yeboah

Learn the language that they understand, and when they come upon our doorstep to talk we can talk, and they will get the point. There will be a dialog, there will be some communication, and I am quite certain that then there will be some understanding. — Malcolm X

Some people believe that mirror neurons are also central to our ability to empathize with others and may even account for the emergence of gestural communication and spoken language. What we do know is that certain neurons increase their firing rate when we perform object-oriented actions with our hands (grasping, manipulating) and communicative or ingestive actions with our mouths. These neurons also fire, albeit less rapidly, whenever we witness the same actions performed by other people. Research — Sam Harris

Buenos dias, she said in response to Hernandez's soft greeting. They had a pact to speak only Spanish to each other, with the result that their conversation never got beyond hello and good-bye. — Wallace Stegner

The communication of ideas requires a similitude of thought and language ... — Edward Gibbon

I can't find good people" becomes "I can't know who my A players are until I challenge them to find out." "Nobody cares as much as I do" becomes "I haven't figured out how they care in their own way that can harmonize with the way that I do." "I can't afford to invest time in someone who is just going to leave anyway" becomes "I don't have time to do anything else." "I'm not a therapist, I don't have the skills to help them with their personal problems" becomes "I'm not a therapist, but I am two steps ahead of this person as a professional and can help them grow by sharing the things I've learned along the way." "We just need better systems and more communication" becomes "We don't need more communication. We need to start speaking a different language." Imagine — Jonathan Raymond

All the time when I speak to you, even now, I'm saying not precisely what I think, but what will impress you and make you respond. That's so even between us - and how much more it's so where there are stronger motives for deception. In fact, one's so used to this one hardly sees it. The whole language is a machine for making falsehoods. — Iris Murdoch

Poetry springs directly from our primal need and capacity for communication[Poetry] mobilizes such a concentration of devices, such an intensification of language via rhythm, syntax, image and metaphor. Reading it-the best of it-can create another, very different kind of perpetual present, an awareness that can be as ongoing in the soul as the stop-time of trauma. — Sven Birkerts

In science fiction, telepaths often communicate across language barriers, since thoughts are considered to be universal. However, this might not be true. Emotions and feelings may well be nonverbal and universal, so that one could telepathically send them to anyone, but rational thinking is so closely tied to language that it is very unlikely that complex thoughts could be sent across language barriers. Words will still be sent telepathically in their original language. — Michio Kaku

When a language creates - as it does - a community within the present, it does so only by courtesy of a community between the present and the past. — Christopher Ricks

Scientists attach great importance to the human capacity for spoken language. But we also have a parallel track of nonverbal communication, which may reveal more than our carefully chosen words, and sometimes be at odds with them. — Leonard Mlodinow

Language is material to shape and mold, not only a transparent or invisible medium for communication, business contracts, or telling stories. — Kenneth Goldsmith

To say exactly what one means, even to one's own private satisfaction, is difficult. To say exactly what one means and to involve another person is harder still. Communication between you and me relies on assumptions, associations, commonalities and a kind of agreed shorthand, which no-one could precisely define but which everyone would admit exists. That is one reason why it is an effort to have a proper conversation in a foreign language. Even if I am quite fluent, even if I understand the dictionary definitions of words and phrases, I cannot rely on a shorthand with the other party, whose habit of mind is subtly different from my own. Nevertheless, all of us know of times when we have not been able to communicate in words a deep emotion and yet we know we have been understood. This can happen in the most foreign of foreign parts and it can happen in our own homes. It would seem that for most of us, most of the time, communication depends on more than words. — Jeanette Winterson

Strong communicators increase their influence because they are intentional and focused with their language. — Dianna Booher

A reason to have computers understand natural language is that it's an extremely effective way of communicating. What I came to realize is that the success of the communication depends on the real intelligence on the part of the listener, and that there are many other ways of communicating with a computer that can be more effective, given that it doesn't have the intelligence. — Terry Winograd

But it is not time constraints alone that produce such fragmented and discontinuous language. When a television show is in process, it is very nearly impermissible to say, "Let me think about that" or "I don't know" or "What do you mean when you say ... ?" or "From what sources does your information come?" This type of discourse not only slows down the tempo of the show but creates the impression of uncertainty or lack of finish. It tends to reveal people in the act of thinking, which is as disconcerting and boring on television as it is on a Las Vegas stage. Thinking does not play well on television, a fact that television directors discovered long ago. There is not much to see in it. It is, in a phrase, not a performing art. But television demands a performing art. — Neil Postman

There's something about you,
Your eyes speak a story in a language only known to my soul. The kind of communication we as humans dream about, the one that reaches into the core of who you are and loves you for it.
It doesn't appear often or by accident & when it happens you just know " There's something about you ". — Nikki Rowe

I just like the feeling of finding the right word in my mind and employing it. I get pleasure from that feeling. I prefer language to gesture. I figured other people might, too. — Aimee Bender

For centuries the writing-desk has contained sheets fit precisely for the communication of friends. Masters of language, poets of long ages, have turned from the sheet that endures to the sheet that perishes, pushing aside the tea-tray, drawing close to the fire (for letters are written when the dark presses around a bright red cave), and addressed themselves the task of reaching, touching, penetrating the individual heart. — Virginia Woolf

All communication is more or less cross-cultural. We learn to use language as we grow up, and growing up in different parts of the country, having different ethnic, religious, or class backgrounds, even just being male or female - all result in different ways of talking ... — Deborah Tannen

Speaking of metaphor, the dative construction works with a number of verbs of communication, as in Ask me no questions, I'll tell you no lies and Sing me no song, read me no rhyme. It's as if we think of ideas as things, knowing as having, communicating as sending, and language as the package. This is sometimes called the conduit metaphor, and it can be seen in dozens of expressions for thinking, saying, and teaching. We gather our ideas to put them into words, and if our verbiage is not empty or hollow, we might get these ideas across to a listener, who can unpack our words to extract their content. — Steven Pinker

The words of language, as they are written or spoken, do not seem to play any role in my mechanism of thought. The physical entities which seem to serve as elements in thought are certain signs and more or less clear images. — Albert Einstein

Don't you find it odd that two of the foremost symptoms of insanity are the hearing voices and talking to oneself? Is it any wonder that language is an area of such interest in psychology?
(attrib: F.L. Vanderson) — Mort W. Lumsden

Voices have a language of their own and communicate much more than the words that they say. — Indu Muralidharan

Communication is not about the sender or receiver; it's about the sending. And that's done with language. — Richard O'Barry

Love has its own communication. It's the language of the heart, while it has never been transcribed, has no alphabet, and can't be heard or spoken by voice, it is used by every human on the planet. It is written on our souls, scripted by the finger of God, and we can hear, understand, and speak it with perfection long before we open our eyes for the first time. — Charles Martin

Because of his capacity for abstract communications and language and his ability to enter in imagination into the lives of others, man is able to build organizations of a size and complexity far beyond those of the lower animals. — Kenneth E. Boulding

If this constant sliding and hiding of meaning were true of conscious life, then we would of course never be able to speak coherently at all. If the whole of language were present to me when I spoke, then I would not be able to articulate anything at all. The ego, or consciousness, can therefore only work by repressing this turbulent activity, provisionally nailing down words on to meanings. Every now and then a word from the unconscious which I do not want insinuates itself into my discourse, and this is the famous Freudian slip of the tongue or parapraxis. But for Lacan all our discourse is in a sense a slip of the tongue: if the process of language is as slippery and ambiguous as he suggests, we can never mean precisely what we say and never say precisely what we mean. Meaning is always in some sense an approximation, a near-miss, a part-failure, mixing non-sense and non-communication into sense and dialogue. — Terry Eagleton

We can no longer communicate with the apes by direct language, nor can we understand, without special study, their modes of communication which we have long since replaced by more elaborate forms. But it is at least presumable that they could still detect in our speech, at least when it is public and elaborate, the underlying tone values with which it began. Thus if we could take a gibbon ape to a college public lecture, he would not understand it, but he would "get a good deal of it." This is all the students get anyway. — Stephen Leacock

Where else, but from the industrialized world, did the suicide hijackers learn that the huge explosions and death above a city skyline are a peculiar and effective form of communication? They have mastered the language. — Chris Hedges

God produced great writing, a matter of first importance to a man like Lincoln, ever impressed with the nature of cause and forces. — Richard Brookhiser

NVC is language, thoughts, communication skills and means of influence that serve my desire to do three things: 1) to liberate myself from cultural learning that is in conflict with how I want to live my life. 2) to empower myself to connect with myself and others in a way that makes compassionate giving natural. 3) to empower myself to create structures that support compassionate giving. — Marshall B. Rosenberg

Totally agree! The fiction reading process is basically a human communication on an emotional, intellectual and spiritual level between reader and writer, transcending space, time, cultures, societies and religions, through the medium of the narrative and characters. Language matters in the sense of aesthetics and embellishment, but not in a rigid scientific way. — Alice Poon