97 Communication Quotes

In a world where connections and interactions are more important than ever, effective communication stands at the heart of all relationships, whether personal or professional. Words have the power to inspire, motivate, heal, and also to open doors to new opportunities. To celebrate the art of expression, we have gathered a curated collection of the top 97 communication quotes. From the wisdom of historical figures to the insights of contemporary thinkers, these quotes offer profound reflections and practical advice on enhancing our ability to convey thoughts and emotions. Take a moment to explore these timeless pieces of wisdom and find the perfect words to elevate your conversations and deepen your connections.

1. “A word to the wise is infuriating. ” - Hunter S. Thompson

2. “Let children read whatever they want and then talk about it with them. If parents and kids can talk together, we won't have as much censorship because we won't have as much fear.” - Judy Blume

3. “Stephen Covey, in his book The 8th Habit, decribes a poll of 23,000 employees drawn from a number of companies and industries. He reports the poll's findings: * Only 37 percent said they have a clear understanding of what their organization is trying to achieve and why * Only one in five was enthusiastic about their team's and their organization's goals * Only one in five said they had a clear "line of sight" between their tasks and their team's and organization's goals * Only 15 percent felt that their organization fully enables them to execute key goals * Only 20 percent fully trusted the organization they work forThen, Covey superimposes a very human metaphor over the statistics. He says, "If, say, a soccer team had these same scores, only 4 of the 11 players on the field would know which goal is theirs. Only 2 of the 11 would care. Only 2 of the 11 would know what position they play and know exactly what they are supposed to do. And all but 2 players would, in some way, be competing against their own team members rather than the opponent.” - Chip Heath & Dan Heath

4. “Constantly talking isn't necessarily communicating.” - Charlie Kaufman

5. “Assumptions are the termites of relationships.” - Henry Winkler

6. “I'm Valerie Rye,' she said, savoring the words. 'It's all right for you to talk to me.” - Octavia E. Butler

7. “To speak little is natural. Therefore a gale does not blow a whole morning nor does a downpour last a whole day.” - Lao Tzu

8. “I always dream of a pen that would be a syringe.” - Jacques Derrida

9. “A wonderful fact to reflect upon, that every human creature is constituted to be that profound secret and mystery to every other.” - Charles Dickens

10. “Self-consciousness kills communication.” - Rick Steves

11. “Though the man-apes often fought and wrestled one another, their disputes very seldom resulted in serious injuries. Having no claws or fighting canine teeth, and being well protected by hair, they could not inflict much harm on one another. In any event, they had little surplus energy for such unproductive behavior; snarling and threatening was a much more efficient way of asserting their points of view.” - Arthur C. Clarke

12. “The newest computer can merely compound, at speed, the oldest problem in the relations between human beings, and in the end the communicator will be confronted with the old problem, of what to say and how to say it.” - Edward R. Murrow

13. “Worte entfremden. Sprache ist kein Medium für Begehren. Begehren ist Hingerissensein, nicht Austausch. Nur dadurch, dass die Sprache das Begehrte entfremdet, beherrscht sie es.” - J.M. Coetzee

14. “Having not said anything the first time, it was somehow even more difficult to broach the subject the second time around.” - Douglas Adams

15. “How it is that animals understand things I do not know, but it is certain that they do understand. Perhaps there is a language which is not made of words and everything in the world understands it. Perhaps there is a soul hidden in everything and it can always speak, without even making a sound, to another soul.” - Frances Hodgson Burnett

16. “The denial of language is a suicidal one and we pay for it with our own lives.” - Joyce Carol Oates

17. “To communicate is our chief business; society and friendship our chief delights; and reading, not to acquire knowledge, not to earn a living, but to extend our intercourse beyond our own time and province.” - Virginia Woolf

18. “[T]he ways in which the information we give off about our selves, in photos and e-mails and MySpace pages and all the rest of it, has dramatically increased our social visibility and made it easier for us to find each other but also to be scrutinized in public.” - Clay Shirky

19. “Communication is truth; communication is happiness. To share is our duty; to go down boldly and bring to light those hidden thoughts which are the most diseased; to conceal nothing; to pretend nothing; if we are ignorant to say so; if we love our friends to let them know it.” - Virginia Woolf

20. “Communications tools don't get socially interesting until they get technologically boring.” - Clay Shirky

21. “[T]he category of 'consumer' is now a temporary behavior rather than a permanent identity.” - Clay Shirky

22. “Try saying this: 'What's true for me today is that I have angry feelings concerning what I heard you say when you said what you said. It reminds me of what my mother said when she said what she said, and that hurts me so that's where I'm at with this, and it's not all right with me for today.' This should help to avoid a lot of communication problems.” - Judith Stone

23. “We are stronger when we listen, and smarter when we share.” - Rania Al-Abdullah

24. “Alles ist erlaubt, alles außer schweigen.” - Daniel Glattauer

25. “Honest, open communication is the only street that leads us into the real world... We then begin to grow as never before. And once we are on this road, happiness cannot be far away.” - John Joseph Powell

26. “When you take the time to actually listen, with humility, to what people have to say, it's amazing what you can learn. Especially if the people who are doing the talking also happen to be children.” - Greg Mortenson

27. “Philosophers say man forms himself in dialogue.” - Anne Carson

28. “Stay open to opportunity -- you never know where your next important connection will be made.” - Nicholas Boothman

29. “Want to play hangman? asks Theophile, and I ache to tell him that I have enough on my plate playing quadriplegic. But my communication system disqualifies repartee: the keenest rapier grows dull and falls flat when it takes several minutes to thrust it home. By the time you strike, even you no longer understand what had seemed so witty before you started to dictate it, letter by letter. So the rule is to avoid impulsive sallies. It deprives conversation of its sparkle, all those gems you bat back and forth like a ball-and I count this forced lack of humor one of the great drawbacks of my condition.” - Jean-Dominique Bauby

30. “The speed of communications is wondrous to behold. It is also true that speed can multiply the distribution of information that we know to be untrue.” - Edward R. Murrow

31. “The level of intelligence has been tremendously increased, because people are thinking and communicating in terms of screens, and not in lettered books. Much of the real action is taking place in what is called cyberspace. People have learned how to boot up, activate, and transmit their brains.Essentially, there’s a universe inside your brain. The number of connections possible inside your brain is limitless. And as people have learned to have more managerial and direct creative access to their brains, they have also developed matrices or networks of people that communicate electronically. There are direct brain/computer link-ups. You can just jack yourself in and pilot your brain around in cyberspace-electronic space.” - Timothy Leary

32. “In the information-communication civilization of the 21st Century, creativity and mental excellence will become the ethical norm. The world will be too dynamic, complex, and diversified, too cross-linked by the global immediacies of modern (quantum) communication, for stability of thought or dependability of behaviour to be successful.” - Timothy Leary

33. “Why do you think, A.J.," they say in unison, "that you find these boys so attractive?" I didn't say that this fiery chemical explosion leaps from somewhere inside me. Parents don't want to hear these things. I shrugged and said nothing. "Maybe you should try sitting on the intensity," Mom suggests, "just until your feelings catch up with reality.""We could chain you to the water heater," Dad offers, "until these little moments pass."You see what I'm up against.” - Joan Bauer

34. “Neither you nor I speak English, but there are some things that can be said only in English.” - Aravind Adiga

35. “Once upon a time there were two countries, at war with each other. In order to make peace after many years of conflict, they decided to build a bridge across the ocean.But because they never learned each other’s language properly, they could never agree on the details, so the two halves of the bridge they started to build never met.To this day the bridge extends far into the ocean from both sides, and simply ends half way, miles in the wrong direction from the meeting point.And the two countries are still at war.” - Vera Nazarian

36. “Into the face of the young man who sat on the terrace of the Hotel Magnifique at Cannes there had crept a look of furtive shame, the shifty hangdog look which announces that an Englishman is about to speak French.” - P.G. Wodehouse

37. “What I think the political correctness debate is really about is the power to be able to define. The definers want the power to name. And the defined are now taking that power away from them.” - Toni Morrison

38. “It takes one to tell, and two to missunderstand.” - H.C. Paye

39. “A thing there was that mattered; a thing, wreathed about with chatter, defaced, obscured in her own life, let drop every day in corruption, lies, chatter. This he had preserved. Death was defiance. Death was an attempt to communicate; people feeling the impossibility of reaching the centre which, mystically, evaded them; closeness drew apart; rapture faded, one was alone. There was an embrace in death.” - Virginia Woolf

40. “He tries to force the anger down, but it's like an anvil on his chest. He closes his eyes, like Sammy taught him, and forces the anvil up; he softens.” - Chris Crutcher

41. “Mend your speech a little, Lest you may mar your fortunes.” - William Shakespeare

42. “Conversation. What is it? A Mystery! It's the art of never seeming bored, of touching everything with interest, of pleasing with trifles, of being fascinating with nothing at all.” - Guy de Maupassant

43. “The first problem of communication is getting people's attention.” - Chip Heath and Dan Heath

44. “If you look hard and long, you can find us. If you listen hard and long, you can hear any of us, call any of us that you wish.” - Tamora Pierce

45. “Cooperativeness is not so much learning how to get along with others as taking the kinks out of ourselves, so that others can get along with us.” - Thomas S. Monson

46. “You can talk with someone for years, everyday, and still, it won't mean as much as what you can have when you sit in front of someone, not saying a word, yet you feel that person with your heart, you feel like you have known the person for forever.... connections are made with the heart, not the tongue.” - C. JoyBell C.

47. “Here's one of the problems with communicating in the words of a man who is not around to explain himself: it's damn hard sometimes to tell what he was talking about. Look, the sheer fact that people have banged out book after article after dramatic interpretation of this guy should tell you that despite his eloquence, he wasn't the clearest of communicators.” - Eleanor Brown

48. “He mentioned the connection between us. He identified with me. These are the things that many people want to hear, that most “normal” people want to be able to truthfully say, but almost no one can.” - Rasmenia Massoud

49. “Interpretations of interpretations interpreted.” - James Joyce

50. “Writing, the art of communicating thoughts to the mind through the eye, is the great invention of the world...enabling us to converse with the dead, the absent, and the unborn, at all distances of time and space.” - Abraham Lincoln

51. “All individuals have moral deficiencies, and when introducing these to reality one not only strengthens himself but also the confidence of others in the human exigency for Christ due to a reflection throughout the body of Christ.” - Criss Jami

52. “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

53. “Human communication, 'as the saying goes, is a clash of symbols' it covers a multitude of signs. But it is more than media and messages, information and persuasion; it also meets a deeper need and serves a higher purpose. Whether clear or garbled, tumultuous or silent, deliberate or fatally inadvertent, communication is the ground of meeting and the foundation of community. It is, in short, the essential human connection.” - Ashley Montagu

54. “Speech is for the convenience of those who are hard of hearing; but there are many fine things which we cannot say if we have to shout.” - Henry David Thoreau

55. “At this rate I never want to talk to you again. Stay mad at me, Allie. It allows us to communicate in other ways.” - Jodi Thomas

56. “What’s not so great is that all this technology is destroying our social skills. Not only have we given up on writing letters to each other, we barely even talk to each other. People have become so accustomed to texting that they’re actually startled when the phone rings. It’s like we suddenly all have Batphones. If it rings, there must be danger. Now we answer, “What happened? Is someone tied up in the old sawmill?”“No, it’s Becky. I just called to say hi.”“Well you scared me half to death. You can’t just pick up the phone and try to talk to me like that. Don’t the tips of your fingers work?” - Ellen DeGeneres

57. “When one comes from the bottom they know how to deal with people on the bottom.When one educates themself to communicate they learn how to deal with a multitude of types of people.Life experience, and communication is at the core of people relations.” - Therone Shellman

58. “Shulman argues that work that is valued is work that is presented to colleagues. The failure to make this kind of wider connection weakens the sense of community. This happens in scholarly life when such essential functions as professional service or teaching do not get discussed openly or often enough.” - Charles E. Glassick

59. “You can have regret from yesterday, fear tomorrow, but peace today by sharing your heart’s deepest feelings. A life spent being fearful of showing your soul is a life not worth living.” - Shannon Alder

60. “It's okay to disagree with the thoughts or opinions expressed by other people. That doesn't give you the right to deny any sense they might make. Nor does it give you a right to accuse someone of poorly expressing their beliefs just because you don't like what they are saying. Learn to recognize good writing when you read it, even if it means overcoming your pride and opening your mind beyond what is comfortable.” - Ashly Lorenzana

61. “God can use the jawbone of an ass!” - Winkie Pratney

62. “As human beings, how do we choose to react in that instant when someone walks toward us, smiles, and begins to speak?” - Jeff Deck

63. “It's not about having things figured out, or about communicating with other people, trying to make them understand what you understand. It's about a chicken dinner at a drive-in. A soft pillow. Things that don't need explaining.” - Ann Beattie

64. “When we turn around & come face to face with our destiny, we discover that words (spoken) are not enough. I know so many people who are brilliant speakers but are quite incapable of practising what they preach. It's one thing to describe a situation & quite another to experience it. I realised a long time ago that a warrior in search of his dream must take his inspiration from what he actually does & not from what he imagines himself doing.” - Paulo Coelho

65. “...being able to listen to unrepeatable secrets, wishes, and desires wasn't as wonderful as it seemed...being aware of what other people felt at every moment would come to cause him a lot of headaches, and huge disappointments in love.” - Laura Esquivel

66. “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

67. “Our hearts are not stones. A stone may disintegrate in time and lose its outward form. But hearts never disintegrate. They have no outward form, and whether good or evil, we can always communicate them to one another.” - Haruki Murakami

68. “Una verdad sin interés puede ser eclipsada por una falsedad emocionante.” - Aldous Huxley

69. “Words have power.” - Mira Grant

70. “You can’t say A is made of B or vice versa. All mass is interaction.” - Richard P. Feynman

71. “This was before voice mail, recorded phone messages you can't escape. Life was easier then. You just didn't pick up the phone.” - Joyce Carol Oates

72. “You know there's no such thing as a complete lie. There's always some truth in there.” - David Levithan

73. “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

74. “The only problem with the Angels' new image was that the outlaws themselves didn't understand it. It puzzled them to be treated as symbolic heroes by people with whom they had almost nothing in common. Yet they were gaining access to a whole reservoir of women, booze, drugs and new action -- which they were eager to get their hands on, and symbolism be damned. But they could never get the hang of the role they were expected to play, and insisted on ad-libbing the lines. This fouled their channels of communication, which made them nervous ... and after a brief whirl on the hipster party circuit, all but a few decided it was both cheaper and easier, in the long run, to buy their own booze and hustle a less complicated breed of pussy.” - Hunter S. Thompson

75. “To love someone with all of your heart requires reaching them where they are with the only words they can understand.” - Shannon L. Alder

76. “Arrogance is someone claiming to have come to Christ, but they won't spend more than five minutes listening to your journey because they are more concerned about their own well being, rather than being a true disciple of Christ. Blessed is the person that takes the time to heal and hear another person so they can move on.” - Shannon L. Alder

77. “True saddness is when someone still thinks your the same person after all these years. They brand you because of their own ego, fear and lack of spirituality. What's sadder is when they are Christian.” - Shannon L. Alder

78. “There are only two ways to live your life. One as if all that matters is to have someone love and accept you. The other is as though loving and accepting another person is all that matters. Often, when you choose the second you get the first.” - Shannon L. Alder

79. “When we learn to speak, we learn to translate.” - Octavio Paz

80. “In the end nothing matters but the work. You can’t control how it’s taken, and the act of telling a story always involves a gap. Sometimes confusion is the risk of ambiguity–I say that to students all the time. It’s true at the fireside and it’s true in the parlor, and it’s true in made-up towns and New York. Two humans face one another, words come out of one, words go into the other mind through the ears and eyes of the listener. It’s a story. It’s simple. The gap is the thing. Make sure you build the bridge.” - Patrick Somerville

81. “The manlier you are, the harder it is to understand what a woman wants: there is not a hint of female brain in you.” - Criss Jami

82. “[Jules] slides into a seat beside me with her hot lunch tray, sighing. “Four hours, thirty-six minutes, and twelve seconds till we’re out of purgatory for the weekend.”“Maybe later,” I murmur, still distracted by the day’s previous events.“So, let me show you how a conversation works. I say something, and then you say something back that actually relates to what I was talking about, as if you were even the least bit interested.” “Huh?” I say.” - Jodi Picoult

83. “It just took some people a little longer than others to realize how few words they needed to get by, how much of life they could negotiate in silence.” - Tom Perrotta

84. “The poem or the discovery exists in two moments of vision: the moment of appreciation as much as that of creation; for the appreciator must see the movement, wake to the echo which was started in the creation of the work. In the moment of appreciation we live again the moment when the creator saw and held the hidden likeness. When a simile takes us aback and persuades us together, when we find a juxtaposition in a picture both odd and intriguing, when a theory is at once fresh and convincing, we do not merely nod over someone else's work. We re-enact the creative act, and we ourselves make the discovery again......Reality is not an exhibit for man's inspection, labeled: "Do not touch." There are no appearances to be photographed, no experiences to be copied, in which we do not take part. We re-make nature by the act of discovery, in the poem or in the theorem. And the great poem and the deep theorem are new to every reader, and yet are his own experiences, because he himself re-creates them. They are the marks of unity in variety; and in the instant when the mind seizes this for itself, in art or in science, the heart misses a beat.” - Jacob Bronowski

85. “The way we talk to our children becomes their inner voice.” - Peggy O'Mara

86. “Where wise actions are the fruit of life, wise discourse is the pollination.” - Bryant McGill

87. “When it comes to words Mamma says, "If they are not good, then maybe they should not be said.” - Annette Bridges

88. “Often we are identified with either the inner man or woman, while the other side is hidden and unexpressed. Outer relationships are a mirror of the relationship and communication between our own inner man and female side. Sometimes one side is dominant, while the other side is submissive.” - Swami Dhyan Giten

89. “I have talents that I'm not supposed to have: I can tell who crushes on who by how they stand, I can read strides, I can hear the tonal differences between an alto and a soprano singing the same line so clearly that to me they sing entirely different notes, and I can read through the lines and tell when a person doesn't need to be writing at all. That, that is what makes me a snob, because I cannot abide a person putting pen to paper or fingers on keys when they don't need to, when word choice is not as relevant and demanding and essential to them as breathing and syntax is about being correct and not about being evocative.” - Julia Bascom

90. “Or maybe this wasn't a human-faerie translation problem at all. 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, considerating 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 tht they existed until I read that stupid article, and I'm pretty sure I'm not the only one. I felt somewhat skeptical about the article's grounding. There were probably a lot of women who didn't communicate on multiple wavelenghts at once. There were probably men who could handle that many just fine. I just wasn't one of them. So, ladies, if you ever have some conversation with your boyfriend or husband or brother or male friend, and you are telling him something perfectly obvious, and he comes away from it utterly clueless? I know it's tempting to think to yourself, "The man can't possibly be that stupid!" But yes. Yes he can.” - Jim Butcher

91. “When you pray, you are speaking to yourself. When you take action, you are speaking to God.” - Steve Maraboli

92. “She told me she loved me. She told me a lot of things. Some of those things were true, and some of those may or may not have been true. It’s kind of hard to tell, because to be honest, I wasn’t listening.
” - Dark Jar Tin Zoo

93. “We no longer have a sufficiently high estimate of ourselves when we communicate. Our true experiences are not garrulous. They could not communicate themselves if they wanted to: they lack words. We have already grown beyond whatever we have words for. In all talking there lies a grain of contempt. Speech, it seems, was devised only for the average medium, communicable. The speaker has already vulgarized himself by speaking.” - Friedrich Nietzsche

94. “What are you saying?”“I want to try.”He wanted clarification on that. “You want to try what?”There it was, that deep flush. “You know.”Yes, he knew, but he wasn’t going to let her off the hook so easily. She was going to be his. For a brief time, she would belong to him and he would have everything he wanted, and he wanted her to start talking dirty. Yes. He wanted to teach her, to train her to accept pleasure so she would expect it. “No, I don’t know. You’ll have to be plain.”Avery blushed a little. “I want to be intimate with you.”So sweet. So polite. So not happening. “That sounds like you want me to get into my pajamas and exchange secrets with you. I’m not your girlfriend, Avery. Tell me what you want. That’s lesson number one. Communication and honesty are the keys to the relationship I want. I need to hear you say plainly what you want.”She hesitated, but only for a moment. He wasn’t surprised. Deep in her heart, she was a brave girl. She’d faced so much and still was open with her heart. Damn, but he didn’t understand that. “I would like for us to sleep together.”“I’m not very sleepy.” He wasn’t going to let her get away with anything.She groaned a little in obvious frustration. “You know that’s not what I’m talking about.”“Yes. I do. So say what you want.”“I want to have sex.”“So clinical. I’ll have to think about that.”“I want to make love.”“Sweet, but not what I’m looking for.”Her face crinkled into the cutest pout. “Damn it, Lee. I want to fuck.”Just like that he was primed and ready. She’d said fuck with such a sweet little heat, her eyebrows forming a V over her face as though the entire incident had offended her polite sensibilities. She would learn there wasn’t room for politeness between them.He growled just a little. “I want to fuck, too, baby. I want to fuck all night long.” - Lexi Blake

95. “Sometimes nothing is the best thing to say and often the best thing to do.” - Michael Thomas Sunnarborg

96. “Don't assume, because you are intelligent, able, and well-motivated, that you are open to communication, that you know how to listen.” - Robert K. Greenleaf

97. “The assumptions that propagandists are rational, in the sense that they follow their own propaganda theories in their choice of communications, and that the meanings of propagandists' communications may differ for different people reoriented the FCC* analysts from a concept of "content as shared" (Berelson would later say "manifest") to conditions that could explain the motivations of particular communicators and the interests they might serve. The notion of "preparatory propaganda" became an especially useful key for the analysts in their effort to infer the intents of broadcasts with political content. In order to ensure popular support for planned military actions, the Axis leaders had to inform; emotionally arouse, and otherwise prepare their countrymen and women to accept those actions; the FCC analysts discovered that they could learn a great deal about the enemy's intended actions by recognizing such preparatory efforts in the domestic press and broadcasts. They were able to predict several major military and political campaigns and to assess Nazi elites' perceptions of their situation, political changes within the Nazi governing group, and shifts in relations among Axis countries. Among the more outstanding predictions that British analysts were able to make was the date of deployment of German V weapons against Great Britain. The analysts monitored the speeches delivered by Nazi propagandist Joseph Goebbels and inferred from the content of those speeches what had interfered with the weapons' production and when. They then used this information to predict the launch date of the weapons, and their prediction was accurate within a few weeks.*FCC - Federal Communications Commission” - Klaus Krippendorff