Selected communication quotes

1. Great minds discuss ideas, average minds discuss events, small minds discuss people.

2. Remember that silence is sometimes the best answer.

3. Maybe the Dalai Lama is the only person who is totally honest, and even with him, he's skillful not to hurt anybody. He's skillful.

4. Kind words can be short and easy to speak, but their echoes are truly endless....

5. One may have a blazing hearth in one's soul and yet no one ever came to sit by it. Passers-by see only a wisp of smoke from the chimney and continue on their way.

6. Tender-handed stroke a nettle, And it stings you for your pains; Grasp it like a man of mettle, And it soft as silk remains. 'Tis the same with common natures: Use 'em kindly, they rebel; But be rough as nutmeg-graters, And the rogues obey you well.

7. Reason gains all people by compelling none.

8. He can compress the most words into the smallest ideas of any man I ever met.

9. A picture is worth 10K words - but only those to describe the picture. Hardly any sets of 10K words can be adequately described with pictures.

10. If a listener nods his head when you're explaining your program, wake him up.

11. The best book on programming for the layman is 'Alice in Wonderland'; but that's because it's the best book on anything for the layman.

12. Charm is a way of getting the answer 'Yes' without asking a clear question.

13. If you are out to describe the truth, leave elegance to the tailor.

14. You do not really understand something unless you can explain it to your grandmother.

15. I don't think that we necessarily lie. I mean, we make our living by pretending that we're someone else. I don't tell tall tales. I always tell the truth.

16. Everything deep is also simple and can be reproduced simply as long as its reference to the whole truth is maintained. But what matters is not what is witty but what is true.

17. Here again, there is no tabulation; for us it is left to sacrifice literary charm, and even some accuracy, in order to bring out the one great point. The cause of human sectarianism is not lack of sympathy in thought, but in speech; and this it is our not unambitious design to remedy.

18. Falsehood is invariably the child of fear in one form or another.

19. It is amusing to discover, in the twentieth century, that the quarrels between two lovers, two mathematicians, two nations, two economic systems, usually assumed insoluble in a finite period should exhibit one mechanism, the semantic mechanism of identification - the discovery of which makes universal agreement possible, in mathematics and in life.

20. Thus, we see that one of the obvious origins of human disagreement lies in the use of noises for words.

21. It is a barren kind of criticism which tells you what a thing is not.

22. I cannot hold with those who wish to put down the insignificant chatter of the world.

23. Speeches easy to young speakers are generally very difficult to old listeners.

24. Money speaks sense in a language all nations understand.

25. Wit is well-bred insolence.

26. It is simplicity that makes the uneducated more effective than the educated when addressing popular audiences.

27. The secret to humor is surprise.

28. A good newspaper, I suppose, is a nation talking to itself.

29. I waited and waited, and when no message came, I knew it must have been from you.

30. If you have something to say and say nothing, you are really telling a lie.

31. My computer must be broken: whenever I ask a wrong question, it gives a wrong answer.

32. Words are a wonderful form of communication, but they will never replace kisses and punches.

33. If only our great thinkers could learn to talk, and our great talkers could learn to think.

34. When you plan a journey from your mind into mine, remember to allow for the time difference.

35. Communication with the dead is only a little more difficult than communication with some of the living.

36. My worst personal problem is that my computer doesn't understand me.

37. How can you call it unreasonable when all I want is my own way?

38. There's nothing on my mind that couldn't be expressed by a long insane outburst of hysterical rage.

39. To the Tax Office: All is over between us. Please don't attempt to communicate with me again.

40. I have just discovered the truth, and can't understand why everybody isn't eager to hear it.

41. The rule is perfect: in all matters of opinion our adversaries are insane.

42. Clothes make the man. Naked people have little or no influence on society.

43. A man is never more truthful than when he acknowledges himself a liar.

44. They spell it 'Vinci' and pronounce it 'Vinchy'. Foreigners always spell better than they pronounce.

45. Guides cannot master the subtleties of the American joke.

46. In Paris they just simply opened their eyes and stared when we spoke to them in French! We never did succeed in making those idiots understand their own language.

47. The minister gave out his text and droned along monotonously through an argument that was so prosy that many a head by and by began to nod - and yet it was an argument that dealt in limitless fire and brimstone and thinned the predestined elect down to a company so small as to be hardly worth the saving.

48. The humorous story is told gravely; the teller does his best to conceal the fact that he even dimly suspects that there is anything funny about it.

49. Only laughter can blow [a colossal humbug] to rags and atoms at a blast. Against the assault of laughter nothing can stand.

50. Drawing on my fine command of language, I said nothing.

51. Humor must not professedly teach, and it must not professedly preach, but it must do both if it would live forever.

52. A lie can make it half way around the world before the truth has time to put its boots on. (This has also been attributed to Winston Churchill.)

53. 'I once sent a telegram to 12 of my friends saying ALL IS DISCOVERED - FLEE AT ONCE. They all left town immediately.

54. I didn't attend the funeral, but I sent a nice letter saying that I approved of it.

55. Kindness is a language which the deaf can hear, and the blind can read.

56. Substitute 'damn' every time you're inclined to write 'very'; your editor will delete it and the writing will be just as it should be.

57. There are no dialogues, only intersecting monologues.

58. Everybody talks about the weather, but nobody does anything about it.

59. It is better to keep your mouth shut and appear stupid than to open it and remove all doubt.

60. Let us not foist this humbug on the world.

61. Horn on visiting England for the first time to visit her penpal, Molly Gamble in England

62. You need to have the courage to say to your wife, get in there and make me some bean dip.

63. Yeah, is this some kind of joke? (To character, when caller claims the character is a just a joke)

64. If you haven't heard the news - and I have been answering e-mails and I have been online in chatrooms and I have been on a HAM radio set and I wandered out into the desert and retrieved two carrier pigeons from some friends of mine that live up in an old silver mine - everyone's talking about it.

65. This is highly irregular-- I thought I was talking to a frozen embryo.

66. If you're calling west of the rockies, make sure you have a telephone.

67. If you're calling from west of the Rockies... I told you not to, didn't I? Didn't I tell you to leave me alone?

68. For all of you assholes calling from west of the Rockies, which includes Boston and the United Kingdom, dial...

69. For all of you assholes calling from east of the Rockies, which includes Peru and California, dial...

70. To call Art Bell, you first have to have phone service in your cabin... and remember the Art Bell Show doesn't accept phone calls from phones that you have to crank.

71. Its a Ted with a little Sirley Temple on top. You get it? Its me with Shirley Temple on...

72. If you hang up on me again, Phil, you'll see exactly what an Austrain village square looks like...from an aerial perspective.

73. (After not paying attention to the caller) I'm sorry, Phil, I've got an emergency. We have a baked potato festival coming up on Sunday.

74. You know, both of you guys can drop down, 4th ring and cook.

75. (To veteran) Do-do you watch reruns of China Beach?

76. Oh, now I get it. You think I was battling my pony, now is it?

77. Ma'am, does your e-mail carry a...able to carry a big enough file to fit a picture of you in it?

78. I'm also suing for emotional kidnapping because when she yelled, 'Get the g-d car out of there', it kidnapped my son's good feeling for me and replace it with my son thinking I'm a pussy.

79. Mmmm-hmmm.... (repeatedly - and loudly - said while a caller speaks, much to their chagrin)

80. (arguing with a caller) No, you're a liar. Liar. I hate you so deeply.

81. I told her to sit down and shut her mouth. Phil, she's my best friend and I feel I can be direct with her.

82. Phil, I've been listening to you badgering me for the past two years and I just have to ask you, do you want me to buy my own Vasaline and spread it, too?

83. What in the hell are you talkin about?

84. Mr. Hendrie, you call me an idiot one more time and you better smile when you say that.

85. Every single person that mentions this person 'Hitler' hangs up on me!

86. You tell the lesbians Bob Green is coming and hell follows!

87. Will you get this old Jew off the phone, quick, and let's go to another call?

88. Bud, I'm giving you the the big shot here, because Hendrie blew it with all those phoney-baloney voices.

89. Why can't I do the simulation at my house? I can be at level six, and it keeps me away from my mom, who is very stupid.

90. The guy was pitching a tent, okay, man?

91. You never talk about your mother. Never talk about mother.

92. (Referring to Walter Bellhaven) Phil, saying that Walter murdered people is like saying Leonardo DaVinci, you know, ah, drew things.

93. Don't make me come through the phone and kick your A.

94. (to Bobbie Dooley) Lady, you're crazy, and your husband's crazy. Hooray for you with your big house. You would've been laying up in that big house on crutches if you'd've touched me. I'd a made mud out yo ass.

95. Why don't you get a piece of fat and slide off?

96. With my wife I don't get no respect. I made a toast on her birthday to 'the best woman a man ever had.' The waiter joined me...

97. Her reasoning is full of tricks And butterfly suggestions, I know no point to which she sticks; She begs the simplest questions, And, when her premises are strong She always draws her inference wrong.

98. He said 'I'll punch your head!' I said 'Whose?' He said 'Yours!' I said 'Mine?' He said 'Yes!' I said 'Oh?' He said 'Want a fight?' I said 'Who?' He said 'You!' I said 'Me?' He said 'Yes!' I said 'No!' So we then came to words, he said 'You're a cad!' I said 'Cad?' He said 'Yes!' I said 'Who?' He said 'Who?' I said 'Yes.' He said 'You!' I said 'Oh!' So of course then I knew.

99. I think I'll stop here.

100. You a motherfucker!