Communication

With pleasant twitter--wit-wit-twit!
~ William Allingham, Life and Phantasy (1889). To Plutus, etc. An Invitation

In communications, familiarity breeds apathy.
~ Bill Bernbach, Bill Bernbach said ... (1989).

Communication must become total and conscious before we can stop it.
~ William S. Burroughs, The Ticket That Exploded (1962).

There can be no settlement of a great cause without discussion, and people will not discuss a cause until their attention is drawn to it.
~ William Jennings Bryan, final remarks in Tennessee v. Scopes (21 July 1925).

Television news is like a lightning flash. It makes a loud noise, lights up everything around it, leaves everything else in darkness and then is suddenly gone.
~ W. Hodding Carter, II

All true society is the acting of one spirit on another, the communication of the activity of one soul to another.
~ William Ellery Channing (D.D.), in Dr. Channing's Note-book (1887). Society -- the State

Topics of conversation among the multitude are generally persons -- sometimes things -- scarcely ever principles.
~ William Benton (W.B.) Clulow, Horæ otiosæ; or, Thoughts, Maxims, and Opinions (1833). Part III. On Life, Men, and Manners

I feel that in-person contact with people is the most important thing in comedy. While I'm up on stage, I can actually put myself into the audience and adjust my pace and tuning to them. I can get into their heads through their ears and through their eyes. Only through this total communication can I really achieve what I'm trying to do.
~ Bill Cosby

Very rarely indeed does a human creature say what it means. Exhaustive definition, lucid statements, concise terminology -- even plain English --are foreign to its nature. The congenial soil in which the fruit of Intelligence ripens is Suggestion, and the wireless telegraphs of the mind are the means by which it rejoices to communicate. Don't try to say what you mean -- because you can't.
~ William Frend De Morgan, Somehow Good (1908). Chapter XXXI

What is the future of the kinetograph? Ask, rather, from what conceivable phase of the future it can be debarred? In the promotion of business interests, in the advancement of science, in the revelation of unguessed worlds, in its educational and re-creative powers, and in its ability to immortalize our fleeting but beloved associations, the kinetograph stands foremost among the creations of modern inventive genius.
~ William Kennedy Laurie ("W.K.L.") Dickson, History Of The Kinetograph, Kinetoscope And Kineto-phonograph (1895).

Do not betray even to your friend too much of your real purposes and thoughts; in conversation, ask questions oftener than you express opinions; and when you speak, offer data and information rather than beliefs and judgments.
~ William James "Will" Durant, The Story of Philosophy: the Lives and Opinions of the Greater Philosophers (1926).

[T]o say nothing, especially when speaking, is half the art of diplomacy.
~ William James "Will" Durant, The Story of Civilization, Volume VII (1961). The Age of Reason Begins

[W]e must have free communication between the expert and the outsider, who may be an expert at something else, or the whole business of forward development and democracy and so on will stop.
~ William Empson, Lecture at Princeton University. Basic English in Criticism

The first work of the director is to set a mood so that the actor's work can take place, so that the actor can create. And in order to do that, you have to communicate, communicate with the actors. And direction is about communication on all levels.
~ William Friedkin, The Harold Lloyd Master Seminar Series at the American Film Institute (16 March 1994).

Anytime we have new forms of communication, it changes behavior whether it is political or business or any type of behavior. Radio and TV did that. The PC will be classed as big or bigger an advancement in communications that those devices were.
~ Bill Gates, from National Museum of American History, Smithsonian, Washington, DC: Transcript of a Video History Interview with Mr William "Bill" Gates (1993).

I'm a great believer that any tool that enhances communication has profound effects in terms of how people can learn from each other, and how they can achieve the kind of freedoms that they're interested in.
~ Bill Gates

As the circles formed by the falling of a stone upon a smooth sheet of water spread wider and wider, becoming less and less distinct as they recede further and further from their centre, so does the life imparted by us, in our communications with each other, flow out, producing its precise effect upon all who come within the sphere of its influence.
~ William Batchelder Greene, The Doctrine of Life: With Some of Its Theological Applications (1843). The Nature of Life

The printing of pictures, however, unlike the printing of words from moveable types, brought a completely new thing into existence ... it made possible for the first time pictorial statements of a kind that could be exactly repeated during the effective life of the printing surface. This exact repetition of pictorial statements has had incalculable effects upon knowledge and thought, upon science and technology, of every kind. It is hardly too much to say that since the invention of writing there has been no more important invention than that of the exactly repeatable pictorial statement.
~ William M. Ivins, Jr. , Prints and Visual Communication (1953).

It is not enough to harvest knowledge by study; the wind of talk must winnow it, and blow away the chaff; then will the clear, bright grains of wisdom be garnered, for our own use or that of others.
~ William Mathews, from The Great Conversers, And Other Essays (1874). II. Literary Clubs

Conversation opens our views, and gives our faculties a more vigorous play; it puts us upon turning our notions on every side, and holds them up to a light that discovers those latent flaws which would probably have lain concealed in the gloom of unagitated abstraction.
~ William Melmoth (the younger), The Letters of Sir Thomas Fitzosborne, On Several Subjects (1742). Letter LXXIV. To Orontes

Conversation uses words, voice tones, faces, smiles, silences, hand gestures, leg movements, comings and goings, all the knit and tangle of humanity. Why don't we value conversation anymore?
~ William Nicholson, The Society of Others (2005).

Much of the pleasure, and all the benefit of conversation, depends upon our opinion of the speaker's veracity.
~ William Paley, The Principles of Moral and Political Philosophy (1785). Book III. Part I. Chapter XV: Lies

It is one of the great strengths of our kind of broadcasting that the advertiser's desire to sell his product to the largest cross-section of the public coincides with our obligation to serve the largest cross-section of our audience.
~ William S. Paley, (1946)

Men are too apt to be more concerned for their credit, than for their cause.
~ William Penn, Some Fruits of Solitude (1693). Part I. Rules Of Conversation

Communication, both formal and informal moves in every conceivable direction in the Japanese company. The effects of this generous flow of information are great and good. ... Understanding what is happening elsewhere in a company helps people to take a greater interest in their work, which they can come to see as part of an estimable whole.
~ William V. Ruch, Corporate Communications: A Comparison of Japanese and American Practices (1984).

There are about 800,000 words in the English language, some 800 of which are used in daily conversations. Because the 800 words have 14,000 meanings in total, we have trouble interpreting messages as they are intended.
~ William V. Ruch, Corporate Communications: A Comparison of Japanese and American Practices (1984).

If you want to "get in touch with your feelings," fine -- talk to yourself. But, if you want to communicate with another thinking human being, get in touch with your thoughts. Put them in order; give them a purpose; use them to persuade, to instruct, to discover, to seduce. The secret way to do this is to write them down, and then cut out the confusing parts.
~ William L. Safire, from On Language (1980).

Listening is a rare happening among human beings. You cannot listen to the word another is speaking if you are preoccupied with your appearance or impressing the other, or if you are trying to decide what you are going to say when the other stops talking, or if you are debating about whether the word being spoken is true or relevant or agreeable.
~ William Stringfellow, Count It All Joy (1967). Protestantism's Rejection of the Bible

[E]very night on the news, television presents everything and explains nothing.
~ William Irwin Thompson, quoted in Political Communication: Rhetoric, Government, And Citizens (1998).

The most direct route to the American mind was through the nation's great agencies of mass communication.
~ William L. Van Deburg, in Hollywood As Mirror: Changing Views of "Outsiders" and "Enemies" in American Movies (1993). A Popular Culture Prophecy: Black American Slavery in Film

I'm not convinced that the world is in any worse shape than it ever was. It's just in this age of almost instantaneous communication, we bear the weight of problems our forefathers only read about after they were solved.
~ William E. "Bill" Vaughan (as Burton Hillis)

Instead of solitary thought, people would listen in to what was said to millions of people, which could not be the best things.
~ William Wyamar Vaughan (on the effect of radio), in the Daily Telegraph (23 October 1926).

We need to work harder at getting our values out to those parts of the world that are most hostile to us. You can call it propaganda if you want. I call it public diplomacy.
~ William H. Webster, Debate on National Security vs. Personal Liberty, University of California, Santa Barbara (3 March 2002).

Of course as long as man lives someone will have to fill the herald's place. Someone will have to do the bellringer's work. Someone will have to tell the story of the day's news and the year's happenings. A reporter is perennial under many names and will persist with humanity. But whether the reporter's story will be printed in types upon a press, I don't know. I seriously doubt it. I think most of the machinery now employed in printing the day's, the week's, or the month's doings will be junked by the end of this century and will be as archaic as the bellringer's bell, or the herald's trumpet. New methods of communication I think will supercede the old.
~ William Allen White, in A Personal Letter to Lyman B. Kellogg (21 April 1931).

Bad human communication leaves us less room to grow.
~ Dr. Rowan Williams, Speech at Lambeth Palace, London (16 June 2005). The Media: Public Interest and Common Good

Why is it so damn hard for people to talk?
~ Thomas Lanier ("Tennessee") Williams, Cat on a Hot Tin Roof (1955). Act Two

Men speak in order to report, women to establish rapport.
~ James Q. Wilson, The Moral Sense (1993). Part II. Chapter 8. Gender

It is one of the eerie facts of modern America that so many events occur solely for the communications industry and have no organic life of their own. They are non-events.
~ William K. Zinsser, from Pop Goes America (1965).