Where nature's end of language is declined,
And men talk only to conceal the mind.
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 sophistical rhetorician, inebriated with the exuberance of his own verbosity.
Speech is better than silence; silence is better than speech.
He spake, and into every heart his words
Carried new strength and courage.
Do you wish people to speak well of you? Then do not speak at all yourself.
I am a barbarian here, because I am not understood by anyone.
One learns taciturnity best among people who have none, and loquacity among the taciturn.
I have often regretted having spoken, never having kept silent.
There was speech in their dumbness, language in their very gesture.