#age

As our larynxes descended, we were able to make sounds with our mouths in new and far more expressive ways. Verbal language soon overtook physical gesturing as the primary means of communication for all human beings except Italians. (Earth (The Book), p. 36) ↗

— Jon Stewart

#humor #italian #jon-stewart #language #communication

If you want to get known as a singer you hire five sexy chicks and let them fight over you onstage and for the cameras. That's publicity, man. ↗

— Sammy Davis, Jr.

#chicks #fight #five #get #hire

If I already intuitively "get" what you're trying to tell me, why should I obsess about remembering it? The danger, of course, is that what sounds like common sense often isn't.... It's your job, as a communicator, to expose the parts of your message that are uncommon sense. (p.72) ↗

— Chip Heath

#communication #express #message #communication

Humans have invented all kinds of symbols to communicate not only with other humans but more importantly with ourselves. ↗

— José Luis Ruiz

#self #communication

It argued a special genius; he was clearly a case of that. The spark of fire, the point of light, sat somewhere in his inward vagueness as a lamp before a shrine twinkles in the dark perspective of a church; and while youth and early middle-age, while the stiff American breeze of example and opportunity were blowing upon it hard, had made the chamber of his brain a strange workshop of fortune. This establishment, mysterious and almost anonymous, the windows of which, at hours of highest pressure, never seemed, for starers and wonderers, perceptibly to glow, must in fact have been during certain years the scene of an unprecedented, a miraculous white-heat, the receipt for producing which it was practically felt that the master of the forge could not have communicated even with the best intentions. ↗

— Henry James

#age

Fear is a communicable disease; it comes out in the sweat and passes from host to host. Fear is an incendiary agent; it combusts with stupidity. ↗

— Brian McGreevy

#combust #disease #fear #host #incendiary

There is one way to understand another culture. Living it. Move into it, ask to be tolerated as a guest, learn the language. At some point understanding may come. It will always be wordless. The moment you grasp what is foreign, you will lose the urge to explain it. To explain a phenomenon is to distance yourself from it. ↗

— Peter Høeg

#culture #foreign #insight #language #understanding

They must talk to each other directly, Ender, mind to mind. What one thinks, another can also think; what one remembers, another can also re-member. Why would they ever develop language? Why would they ever learn to read and write? How would they know what reading and writing were if they saw them? Or signals? Or numbers? Or anything that we use to communicate? This isn’t just a matter of translating from one language to another. They don’t have a language at all. We used every means we could think of to communicate with them, but they don’t even have the machinery to know we’re signaling. And maybe they’ve been trying to think to us, and they can’t understand why we don’t respond. ↗

— Orson Scott Card

#language #reading #telepathy #writing #communication

Human vocabulary is still not capable, and probably never will be, of knowing, recognizing, and communicating everything that can be humanly experienced and felt. Some say that the main cause of this very serious difficulty lies in the fact that human beings are basically made of clay, which, as the encyclopedias helpfully explain, is a detrital sedimentary rock made up of tiny mineral fragments measuring one two hundred and fifty-sixths of a millimeter. Until now, despite long linguistic study, no one has managed to come up with a name for this. ↗

— José Saramago

#vocabulary #communication

A girl expecting rescue never learns to save herself. Even with the means, she will find her courage wanting. ↗

— Kate Morton

#courage