Communication Quotes
Shakespeare leads, then Marshall McLuhan, Homer, Molière and Wittgenstein. Wittgenstein is the one to read for sources. The Tractatus (1922) has the limits of my language meaning the limits of my world, and The Blue Book (1931) reminds us that we do not use language according to strict rules, since it was not taught to us by means of strict rules. Samuel Johnson’s Lives of the English Poets (1779) has the shortest version of the page’s theme: language is the dress of thought.
Two entries carry flags. “The single biggest problem in communication is the illusion that it has taken place” is credited to George Bernard Shaw and marked misattributed. “I have often regretted my speech, never my silence” is credited to Publilius Syrus and disputed.
Most quoted on communication:
Blessed is the man who, having nothing to say, abstains from giving us wordy evidence of the fact.
Just at the age 'twixt boy and youth,
When thought is speech, and speech is truth.
The true use of speech is not so much to express our wants as to conceal them.
A speech comes alive only if it rises from the heart, not if it floats on the lips.
Knowledge belongs to the one who succeeds in mastering a language.
In language, the ignorant have prescribed laws to the learned.
Conversation is the image of the mind; as the man, so is his speech.
The truth thy speech doth show, within my heart reproves the swelling pride.
Let him now speak, or else hereafter for ever hold his peace.