Quotes about communication
page 12

Eugène Edine Pottier photo

“They killed her with their chassepot,
With their machine guns,
And rolled her with its flag
In the clay.
And the mud of the fat hangmen
thought they had prevailed.
And with all that, Nicolas,
The Commune is not dead.”

Eugène Edine Pottier (1816–1887) French politician

On l'a tuée à coups de chassepot
A coups de mitrailleuse,
Et roulée avec son drapeau
Dans la terre argileuse.
Et la tourbe des bourreaux gras
Se croyait la plus forte.
Tout ça n'empêche pas, Nicolas
Qu'la Commune n'est pas morte.
Elle n'est pas morte ! (1886).

J.B. Priestley photo
Roberto Mangabeira Unger photo

“Here, then, is another way to understand the intentions of the social theoretical project that this critical analysis of the contemporary situation of social thought prepares and suggests. Philosophical disputes about the social ideal have increasingly come to turn on an unresolved ambivalence toward the naturalistic premise, an incomplete rebellion against it. The visionary imagination of our age has been both liberated and disoriented. It has been liberated by its discovery that social worlds are contingent in a more radical sense than people had supposed; liberated to disengage the ideas of community and objectivity from any fixed structure of dependence and dominion or even from any determinate shape of social life. It has also, however, been disoriented by a demoralizing oscillation between a trumped-up sanctification of existing society and would-be utopian flight that finds in the land of its fantasies the inverted image of the circumstance it had wanted to escape; disoriented by the failure to spell out what the rejection of the naturalistic view means for the vision of a regenerate society. The social theory we need must vindicate a modernist—that is to say, a nonnaturalistic—view of community and objectivity, and it must do so by connecting the imagination of the ideal with the insight into transformation.”

Roberto Mangabeira Unger (1947) Brazilian philosopher and politician

Source: Social Theoryː Its Situation and Its Task (1987), p. 47

Gloria Estefan photo

“As a writer, I see myself more as a communicator. For me, writing is the best part of my career.”

Gloria Estefan (1957) Cuban-American singer-songwriter, actress and divorciada

"Billboard Magazine" (11 October 2003)
2007, 2008

John Kenneth Galbraith photo
Richie Sambora photo
Ilana Mercer photo
Edward Heath photo
Poul Anderson photo
William Ewart Gladstone photo

“Show me the manner in which a nation or a community cares for its dead. I will measure exactly the sympathies of its people, their respect for the laws of the land, and their loyalty to high ideals.”

William Ewart Gladstone (1809–1898) British Liberal politician and prime minister of the United Kingdom

Attributed in "Successful Cemetery Advertising" in The American Cemetery (March 1938), p. 13; reported as unverified in Respectfully Quoted: A Dictionary of Quotations (1989)
Disputed

“A central problem in teaching mathematics is to communicate a reasonable sense of taste—meaning often when to, or not to, generalize, abstract, or extend something you have just done.”

Richard Hamming (1915–1998) American mathematician and information theorist

Methods of Mathematics Applied to Calculus, Probability, and Statistics (1985)

Taslima Nasrin photo
John F. Kennedy photo
Mata Amritanandamayi photo
Marc Benioff photo
Tigran Sargsyan photo
Alfred de Zayas photo

“It is time to reinvigorate the UN General Assembly so that it can exercise a more decisive role in peace-making and peace-keeping, consistent with the will of the international community.”

Alfred de Zayas (1947) American United Nations official

Rights expert urges the UN General Assembly to adopt a more decisive role in peace-making (For International Day of Peace, Saturday 21 September 2013) http://dezayasalfred.wordpress.com/2013/09/26/rights-expert-urges-the-un-general-assembly-to-adopt-a-more-decisive-role-in-peace-making-for-international-day-of-peace-saturday-21-september-2013/.
2013, 2013 - International Peace Day

Khushwant Singh photo
Tessa Virtue photo
Margaret Thatcher photo
Italo Calvino photo
John Stuart Mill photo
Thomas Kuhn photo

“Since God himself is just and commands justice, the Muslim community (umma) cannot tolerate a tyrannical law or a tyrannical ruler.”

Richard A. Horsley (1939) Biblical scholar

Source: Religion and Empire: People, Power, and the Life of the Spirit (2003), p. 60

Marshall McLuhan photo

“The new science of communication is percept, not concept.”

Marshall McLuhan (1911–1980) Canadian educator, philosopher, and scholar-- a professor of English literature, a literary critic, and a …

Source: 1990s and beyond, The Book of Probes : Marshall McLuhan (2011), p. 259

“Probably the greatest single weakness of the Sino-Soviet bloc is her shaky economy. Here is a soft spot where peaceful pressures could be devastating. No amount of Soviet propaganda can cover up the obvious collapse of the Chinese communes and the sluggish inefficiency of the Soviet collectivized farms. Every single Soviet satellite is languishing in a depression. Even Pravda has openly criticized the lack of bare essentials and the shoddy quality of Russian-made goods. These factors of austerity and deprivation add to the hatred and misery of the people which constantly feed the flames of potential revolt. Terrorist tactics have been used by the Red leaders to suppress uprisings. In spite of the virtual "state of siege" which exists throughout the Soviet empire, there are many outbreaks of violent protest. All of this explains why the Soviet leaders are constantly pleading for "free trade," "long-term loans," "increased availability of material goods from the West." Economically, Communism is collapsing but the West has not had the good sense to exploit it. Instead, the United States, Great Britain and 37 other Western powers are shipping vast quantities of goods to the Sino-Soviet bloc. Some business leaders have had the temerity to suggest that trade with the Reds helps the cause of peace. They suggest that "you never fight the people you trade with." Apparently they cannot even remember as far back as the late Thirties when this exact type of thinking resulted in the sale of scrap iron and oil to the Japanese just before World War II. After the attack on Pearl Harbor it became tragically clear that while trade with friends may promote peace, trade with a threatening enemy is an act of self-destruction. Have we forgotten that fatal lesson so soon?”

The Naked Communist (1958)

Thomas Eakins photo
Friedrich Engels photo
Kent Hovind photo
Tom Cruise photo

“Sex is about the connection. Great sex is a by-product, for me, of a great relationship, where you have communication and it's an extension of that. Where it's just free. And that's how it should be. It's spectacular.”

Tom Cruise (1962) American actor and film producer

Quoted in Nicole Lampert, "Cruise: Katie can use painkillers during birth" http://www.dailymail.co.uk/pages/live/articles/showbiz/showbiznews.html?in_article_id=383118&in_page_id=1773, The Daily Mail (2006-04-15).

Adrianne Wadewitz photo

“Wadewitz said to attract more women editors, attitudes within the Wikipedia community need to change. This became clear when she revealed her gender, after writing anonymously for several years.”

Adrianne Wadewitz (1977–2014) academic and Wikipedian

Wholf, Tracy (May 18, 2014). "'Wikipedian' editor took on website’s gender gap" http://www.pbs.org/newshour/bb/wikipedian-editor-took-wikipedias-gender-gap/. PBS NewsHour (PBS). Retrieved May 19, 2014.
About

Murray Leinster photo
Arthur James Balfour photo

“His Majesty’s Government views with favour the establishment in Palestine of a national home for the Jewish people, and will use their best endeavours to facilitate the achievement of this object, it being clearly understood that nothing shall be done which may prejudice the civil and religious rights of the existing non-Jewish communities in Palestine, or the rights and political status enjoyed by Jews in any other country.”

Arthur James Balfour (1848–1930) British Conservative politician and statesman

Letter (2 November 1917) to Lord Rothschild; this letter became known as the Balfour Declaration, quoted in Blanche E. C. Dugdale, Arthur James Balfour, First Earl of Balfour, K.G., O.M., F.R.S., Etc. 1906–1930 (London: Hutchinson & Co. Ltd, 1936), p. 171.

Mary McCarthy photo
Ian McDonald photo
Roy Jenkins photo

“In retrospect we might have been more cautious about allowing the creation in the 1950s of substantial Muslim communities here, although when one observes the, in some ways, greater problems which France and Germany have in this respect, it is an illusion to believe that in the integrated world of today any major country can remain exclusively indigenous.”

Roy Jenkins (1920–2003) British politician, historian and writer

'On Race Relations and the Rushdie Affair', The Independent Magazine (4 March 1989), p. 16, quoted in Elham Manea, Women and Shari'a Law: The Impact of Legal Pluralism in the UK (I.B. Tauris, 2016), p. 256.
1980s

Ellen G. White photo

“Richard Feynman presciently stated… that ‘There’s Plenty of Room at the Bottom’. …within this vast room … there will be a requirement for communication.”

Bush, S.F., Nanoscale Communication Networks, 2010, 308 pages, Artech House; 1 edition (February 28, 2010) ISBN-10: 1608070034, ISBN-13: 978-1608070039.

Marshall McLuhan photo
Jon Cruddas photo
Geert Mak photo
Enoch Powell photo

“Now, at present Britain has no V. A. T., and the questions whether this new tax should be introduced, how it should be levied, and what should be its scope, would be matters of debate in the country and in Parliament. The essence of parliamentary democracy lies in the power to debate and impose taxation: it is the vital principle of the British House of Commons, from which all other aspects of its sovereignty ultimately derive. With Britain in the community, one important element of taxation would be taken automatically, necessarily and permanently out of the hands of the House of Commons…Those matters which sovereign parliaments debate and decide must be debated and decided not by the British House of Commons but in some other place, and by some other body, and debated and decided once for the whole Community…it is a fact that the British Parliament and its paramount authority occupies a position in relation to the British nation which no other elective assembly in Europe possesses. Take parliament out of the history of England and that history itself becomes meaningless. Whole lifetimes of study cannot exhaust the reasons why this fact has come to be, but fact it is, so that the British nation could not imagine itself except with and through its parliament. Consequently the sovereignty of our parliament is something other for us than what your assemblies are for you. What is equally significant, your assemblies, unlike the British Parliament, are the creation of deliberate political acts, and most of recent political acts. The notion that a new sovereign body can be created is therefore as familiar to you as it is repugnant, not to say unimaginable, to us. This deliberate, and recent, creation of sovereign assemblies on the continent is in turn an aspect of the fact that the continent is familiar, and familiar in the recent past, with the creation of nation states themselves. Four of the six members of the Community came into existence as such no more than a century or a century and a half ago – within the memory of two lifetimes.”

Enoch Powell (1912–1998) British politician

Speech in Lyons (12 February 1971), from The Common Market: The Case Against (Elliot Right Way Books, 1971), pp. 65-68.
1970s

Alan Grayson photo
Michel De Montaigne photo
William H. Gass photo
Ayaan Hirsi Ali photo
Leonard Trelawny Hobhouse photo

“He is a citizen of the world in that he represents his nation, which is a member of the community of the world.”

Leonard Trelawny Hobhouse (1864–1929) British sociologist

Source: Liberalism (1911), Chapter V, Gladstone And Mill, p. 56 .

Neal Stephenson photo
Louis-ferdinand Céline photo
Adlai Stevenson photo
Alfred P. Sloan photo

“My job is to faithfully interpret the work of the Legislature and to try and communicate to our judgments as clearly as possible, I never signed on for the job of philosopher king, If I thought I was any good at crafting policy, I would be in a different branch of government.”

Joan Larsen (1968) United States Circuit Judge for the Sixth Circuit

POTUS election could have ‘huge’ impact on Mich. judges http://www.detroitnews.com/story/news/politics/2016/06/04/potus-election-huge-impact-mich-judges/85424958/ (June 4, 2016)

Geert Wilders photo
Winston S. Churchill photo

“The contrast between the morals at the centre of power and those practiced by wide communities in many subject lands presented problems of ever growing unrest.”

On the last years of Rome and Roman Britain; Vol I; The Birth of Britain.
A History of the English-Speaking Peoples (1956–58)

Felix Frankfurter photo

“For the highest exercise of judicial duty is to subordinate one's personal pulls and one's private views to the law of which we are all guaradians - those impersonal convictions that made a society a civilized community, and not the victims of personal rule.”

Felix Frankfurter (1882–1965) American judge

A Heritage For All Who Love The Law 51 ABAJ 330 (1965); quoted by United States Senator Howell Heflin during the confirmation debate for Justice David Souter, on September 24, 1990, S13540.
Other writings

Lewis M. Branscomb photo
Kurien Kunnumpuram photo

“Mission of the Church is to collaborate with God in his work for the wholeness of the human person, the human community and the cosmos according to the pattern revealed in Jesus Christ.”

Kurien Kunnumpuram (1931–2018) Indian theologian

Kunnumpuram, K. (2009) Towards the Fullness of Life: Reflections on the Daily Living of the Faith. Mumbai: St Pauls
On the Church

Francis Escudero photo
Koenraad Elst photo

“…H. K. Srivastava, made a proposal to attack the problem of communal friction at what he apparently considered its roots. He wanted all press writing about the historical origins of temples and mosques to be banned. And it is true : the discussion of the origins of some mosques is fundamental to this whole issue. For, it reveals the actual workings of an ideology that, more than anything else, has caused countless violent confrontations between the religious communities. However, after the news of this proposal came, nothing was heard of it anymore. I surmise that the proposal was found to be juridically indefensible in that it effectively would prohibit history-writing, a recognized academic discipline of which journalism makes use routinely. And I surmise that it was judged politically undesirable because it would counterproductively draw attention to this explosive topic. The real target of this proposal was the book Hindu Temples : What Happened to Them (A Preliminary Survey) by Arun Shourie and others. In the same period, there has been a proposal in the Rajya Sabha by Congress MP Mrs. Aliya to get this book banned,… The really hard part of the book is a list of some two thousand Muslim buildings that have been built on places of previous Hindu worship (and for which many more than two thousand temples have been demolished). In spite of the threat of a ban on raking up this discussion, on November 18 the U. P. daily Pioneer has published a review of this book, by Vimal Yogi Tiwari,…. "History is not just an exercise in collection of facts though, of course, facts have to be carefully sifted and authenticated as Mr. Sita Ram Goel has done in this case. History is primarily an exercise in self-awareness and reinforcement of that self-awareness. Such a historical assessment has by and large been missing in our country. This at once gives special significance to this book."”

Koenraad Elst (1959) orientalist, writer

1990s, Ayodhya and After: Issues Before Hindu Society (1991)

Margaret Mead photo
Pat Condell photo
Charles Cooley photo

“The social self is simply any idea, or system of ideas, drawn from the communicative life, that the mind cherishes as its own.”

Charles Cooley (1864–1929) American sociologist

Source: Human Nature and the Social Order, 1902, p. 17

Alfred de Zayas photo
Sri Aurobindo photo
Krishna Raja Wadiyar IV photo
George W. Bush photo
Joseph Campbell photo
Taslima Nasrin photo
Manuel Castells photo
Bernard Lewis photo
Randal Marlin photo

“Anyone familiar with the marvels of the Worldwide Web can hardly fail to see that we have entered a new era in communications on a scale perhaps comparable to the invention of the Gutenberg press.”

Randal Marlin (1938) Canadian academic

Source: Propaganda & The Ethics Of Persuasion (2002), Chapter Eight, Propaganda, Democracy, And the Internet, p. 284

Gustave Courbet photo
Marshall McLuhan photo

“The bias of each medium of communication is far more distorting than the deliberate lie.”

Marshall McLuhan (1911–1980) Canadian educator, philosopher, and scholar-- a professor of English literature, a literary critic, and a …

JQ. Journalism quarterly, Volume 50, Association for Education in Journalism, 1973, p. 145
1970s

Alan Charles Kors photo

“Socialism almost never has been judged as a goal in value by the experience of communism in power.”

Alan Charles Kors (1943) American academic

2010s, Socialism's Legacy (2011)

George Sarton photo

“The whole past and the whole world are alive in my heart, and I shall do my part to communicate their presence to my readers.”

George Sarton (1884–1956) American historian of science

Preface.
A History of Science Vol.2 Hellenistic Science and Culture in the Last Three Centuries B.C. (1959)

Warren Farrell photo
Carl I. Hagen photo
Rollo May photo

“Perhaps the greatest and least visible form of impoverishment caused by the Corporate State is the destruction of community.”

Source: The Greening of America (1970), Chapter VII : "It's Just Like Living", p. 181

Ed Gillespie photo

“The key to improving Virginians’ interactions with their government is to design processes with an eye toward the citizen experience and not toward a government organizational chart. As governor, I will improve the way agencies interact with each other and with Virginians. Through digitization and increased communication, we can break down the siloed approach and encourage cross-agency collaboration. This is good for our sportsmen.”

Ed Gillespie (1961) American political strategist

An interview with gubernatorial candidate Ed Gillespie http://www.fredericksburg.com/sports/outdoors/ken-perrotte-an-interview-with-gubernatorial-candidate-ed-gillespie/article_ac9bcf45-054a-5a84-b7e2-e5214e3209e7.html (October 25, 2017)

Hendrik Verwoerd photo
Thomas Babington Macaulay, 1st Baron Macaulay photo
Albert Einstein photo

“Combinatory play seems to be the essential feature in productive thought — before there is any connection with logical construction in words or other kinds of signs which can be communicated to others.”

Albert Einstein (1879–1955) German-born physicist and founder of the theory of relativity

Ideas and Opinions (1954), pp. 25–26
1950s

Steven M. Greer photo

“The conventional world of science thinks what I'm doing is nonsense, yet I'm one of the biggest skeptics in the UFO community because 90 percent of what I hear about this subject is nonsense. A lot of the information (about aliens) presented to the public is some kind of fantasy, but at its core there's always a little truth.”

Steven M. Greer (1955) American ufologist

Undated
Source: [Pearson, Mike, Is The Proof Out There, Too?, Rocky Mountain News, June 6, 1999, http://nl.newsbank.com/nl-search/we/Archives?p_product=RM&p_theme=rm&p_action=search&p_maxdocs=200&p_topdoc=1&p_text_direct-0=0EB4EDDE3547235C&p_field_direct-0=document_id&p_perpage=10&p_sort=YMD_date:D&s_trackval=GooglePM, 2007-05-12, http://nbgoku23.googlepages.com/ISTHEPROOFOUTTHERETOO.htm, 2007-05-12]

Mark Zuckerberg photo

“Giving people a voice on the one hand, and keeping the community and people safe on the other hand. Our bias tends to be to want to give people a voice and let people express a wide range of opinions. I don’t think that’s a liberal or conservative thing; those are the words in the U. S.”

Mark Zuckerberg (1984) American internet entrepreneur

In an interview with Kara Swisher as quoted in Zuckerberg: The Recode interview https://www.recode.net/2018/7/18/17575156/mark-zuckerberg-interview-facebook-recode-kara-swisher (July 18, 2018), Recode.

A. James Gregor photo
Will Eisner photo
Jack Kirby photo
Philip Rosedale photo

“It's a bit like The Matrix… We provide the land, and the community builds the actual world, which gives everyone a huge sense of being pioneers in a great experiment.”

Philip Rosedale (1968) American businessman, founder of Second Life

Source: Marco R. della Cava, " Utopia goes digital http://usatoday30.usatoday.com/life/lifestyle/2005-08-21-virtual-utopia_x.htm," USA TODAY, 8/21/2005