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:
A language survives through natural social use, not through staged symbols.
In general those who nothing have to say
Contrive to spend the longest time in doing it.
Writ in the climate of heaven, in the language spoken by angels.
Language is texture of images and music. We speak in images and rhythm, by taking help of words.
Philosophy is a battle against the bewitchment of our intelligence by means of our language.
That which is repeated too often becomes insipid and tedious.
We must distinguish between speaking to deceive and being silent to be reserved.
Grammar, which knows how to lord it over kings, and with high hands makes them obey its laws.