Quotes about communication
page 8

Viktor Orbán photo

“Naturally, when considering the whole issue of who will live in Europe, one could argue that this problem will be solved by successful integration. The reality, however, is that we’re not aware of any examples of successful integration… In countering arguments for successful integration, we must also point out that if people with diverging goals find themselves in the same system or country, it won’t lead to integration, but to chaos. It’s obvious that the culture of migrants contrasts dramatically with European culture. Opposing ideologies and values cannot be simultaneously upheld, as they are mutually exclusive. To give you the most obvious example, the European people think it desirable for men and women to be equal, while for the Muslim community this idea is unacceptable, as in their culture the relationship between men and women is seen in terms of a hierarchical order. These two concepts cannot be upheld at the same time. It’s only a question of time before one or the other prevails. Of course one could also argue that communities coming to us from different cultures can be re-educated. But we must see – and Bishop Tőkés also spoke about this – that now the Muslim communities coming to Europe see their own culture, their own faith, their own lifestyles and their own principles as stronger and more valuable than ours. So, whether we like it or not, in terms of respect for life, optimism, commitment, the subordination of individual interests and ideals, today Muslim communities are stronger than Christian communities. Why would anyone want to adopt a culture that appears to be weaker than their own strong culture? They won’t, and they never will! Therefore re-education and integration based on re-education cannot succeed.”

Viktor Orbán (1963) Hungarian politician, chairman of Fidesz
Ken Kutaragi photo

“You can communicate to a new cybercity. This will be the ideal home server. Did you see the movie The Matrix? Same interface. Same concept. Starting from next year, you can jack into The Matrix!”

Ken Kutaragi (1950) Japanese businessman

"The Amazing PlayStation 2", Newsweek, 27 February 2000 http://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/newsweek-cover-the-amazing-playstation-2-72777512.html

“…Nanoscale Communication Networks is a very good and valuable book.”

Book Reviews, REVIEWER: JAKUB PALIDER, NANOSCALE COMMUNICATION NETWORKS STEPHEN F. BUSH, ARTECH HOUSE, 2010, ISBN-13: 978-1-60807-003-9, HARDCOVER, 308 PAGES, IEEE Communications Magazine, August 2011.

Nicholas Sparks photo

“Standing next to Micah, I realized that there were times when we talked not because we needed to communicate anything important, but simply because we each drew comfort from the other's voice.”

Nicholas Sparks (1965) American writer and novelist

Nicholas Sparks, Chapter 9, p. 138
2000s, Three Weeks with My Brother (2004)

Jonathan Swift photo

“There is, indeed, no wild beast more to be dreaded than a communicative man having nothing to communicate.”

Jonathan Swift (1667–1745) Anglo-Irish satirist, essayist, and poet

Christian Nestell Bovee, in Intuitions and Summaries of Thought (1862), Volume I, p. 124
Misattributed

“To me, Dharma had always been a matter of moral norms, external rules and regulations, do's and don'ts, enforced on life by an act of will. Now I was made to see Dharma as a multi dimensional movement of man's inner law of being, his psychic evolution, his spiritual growth, and his spontaneous building of an outer life for himself and the community in which he lived.”

Sita Ram Goel (1921–2003) Indian activist

How I became a Hindu (1982)
Variant: To me, Dharma had always been a matter of moral norms, external rules and regulations, do's and don'ts, enforced on life by an act of will. Now I was made to see Dharma as a multi dimensional movement of man's inner law of being, his psychic evolution, his spiritual growth, and his spontaneous building of an outer life for himself and the community in which he lived.

David Fleming photo
Duke Ellington photo
Laisenia Qarase photo

“It has, understandably, aggrieved our Muslim community. Their religion and its founder have been insulted, and ridiculed.”

Laisenia Qarase (1941) Prime Minister of Fiji

( Fiji Live http://www.Fijilive.com).
Reaction to the Jyllands-Posten Muhammad cartoons controversy, 7 February 2006

Stanley Hauerwas photo
Alija Izetbegović photo
James Russell Lowell photo

“Utopia is a framework for utopias, a place where people are at liberty to join together voluntarily to pursue and attempt to realize their own vision of the good life in the ideal community but where no one can impose his own utopian vision upon others.”

Source: Anarchy, State, and Utopia (1974), Ch. 10 : A Framework for Utopia; The Framework, p. 311
Context: There will not be one kind of community existing and one kind of life led in utopia. Utopia will consist of utopias, of many different and divergent communities in which people lead different kinds of lives under different institutions. Some kinds of communities will be more attractive to most than others; communities will wax and wane. People will leave some for others or spend their whole lives in one. Utopia is a framework for utopias, a place where people are at liberty to join together voluntarily to pursue and attempt to realize their own vision of the good life in the ideal community but where no one can impose his own utopian vision upon others.

James Thurber photo

“Precision of communication is important, more important than ever, in our era of hair trigger balances, when a false or misunderstood word may create as much disaster as a sudden thoughtless act.”

James Thurber (1894–1961) American cartoonist, author, journalist, playwright

Lanterns and Lances‎ (1961), p. 44
From Lanterns and Lances‎

Ward Cunningham photo
Gustave de Molinari photo
Dominic Cadbury photo
El Lissitsky photo

“.. into this chaos [after the Bolshevik' revolution] came suprematism extolling the square [referring to the Squares of Malevich] as the very source of all creative expression, and then came communism and extolled work as the true source of man's heartbeat.”

El Lissitsky (1890–1941) Soviet artist, designer, photographer, teacher, typographer and architect

Quote, 1920; in 'Suprematism in World Reconstruction,', El Lissitzky; as cited by Sophie Lissitzky-Küppers in El Lissitzky: Life, Letters, Texts, transl. Helene Aldwinckle and Mary Whittall (Greenwich, Conn.: New York Graphic Society, 1968), p. 327
1915 - 1925

John Ashcroft photo
Margaret Mead photo

“[Among the Arapeh… both father and mother are held responsible for child care by the entire community…] If one comments upon a middle-aged man as good-looking, the people answer: 'Good-looking? Ye-e-e-s? But you should have seen him before he bore all those children.”

Margaret Mead (1901–1978) American anthropologist

Source: 1930s, Sex and Temperament in Three Primitive Societies (1935), p. 55; cited inWomen, History, and Theory : The Essays of Joan Kelly (1986), by Joan Kelly, p. 137

Huldrych Zwingli photo

“Grace and peace from God to you, respected, honoured, wise clement, gracious and beloved Masters: An exceedingly unfortunate affair has happened to me, in that I have been publicly accused before your worships of having reviled you in unseemly words and, be it said with all respect, of having called you heretics, my gracious rulers of the State. I am so far from applying this name to you, that I should as soon think of calling heaven hell. For all my life I have thought and spoken of you in terms of praise and honour, gentlemen of Abtzell, as I do to-day, and, as God favours me, shall do to the end of my days. But it happened not long ago when I was preaching against the Catabaptists that I used these words: 'The Catabaptists are now doing so much mischief to the upright citizens of Abtzell and are showing so great insolence, that nothing could be more infamous. You see, gentle sirs, with what modesty I grieved on your account, because the turbulent Catabaptists caused you so much trouble. Indeed I suspect that the Catabaptists are the very people who have set this sermon against me in circulation among you, for they do many of those things which do not become true Christians. Therefore, gentle and wise sirs, I beg most earnestly that you will have me exculpated before the whole community, and, if occasion arise, that you will have this letter read in public assembly. Sirs, I assure you in the name of God our Saviour, in these perilous times you have never been our of my thoughts and my solicitious anxiety; and if in any way I shall be able to serve you I will spare no pains to do so. In addition to the fact that I never use such terms even against my enemies, let me say that it never entered my mind to apply such insulting epithets to you, pious and wise sirs. Sufficient of this. May God preserve you in safety, and may He put a curb on these unbridled falsehoods which are being scattered everywhere, which is an evidence of some great peril - and may He hold your worships and the whole state in the true faith of Christ@ Take this letter of mine in good part, for I could not suffer that so base a falsehood against me should lie uncontradicted.”

Huldrych Zwingli (1484–1531) leader of the Protestant Reformation in Switzerland, and founder of the Swiss Reformed Churches

Letter to Abtzell February 12, 1526 (vi., 473), ibid, p.250-251

Letitia Elizabeth Landon photo
Tom Clancy photo
Norman Thomas photo
Robert Rauschenberg photo
Charlie Beck photo

“Activists laud Beck for establishing cooperative relationships with a number of communities, particularly Latinos and blacks, and for his sophisticated approach to gang crime, which has been cut in half during his tenure.”

Charlie Beck (1953) Chief of the Los Angeles Police Department

December 5, 2014, LAPD Chief Charlie Beck earns good reviews; tough challenges lie ahead, Los Angeles Daily News, August 9, 2014, Brenda Gazzar http://www.dailynews.com/government-and-politics/20140809/lapd-chief-charlie-beck-earns-good-reviews-tough-challenges-lie-ahead,
About

Gustav Stresemann photo

“We agree to recognise Lithuanian independence on condition that the desire of the Lithuanians for a military convention and a customs, monetary and postal union with Germany, communicated to us some time ago by a Lithuanian delegation, still remains. For to be candid, the idea of full independence for these peripheral countries seems to me to be purely theoretical and impracticable…The whole development of world politics shows that we have not only great and powerful individual countries like Germany on the one hand and Britain and France on the other, but associations of States fighting against each other…I do not believe in Wilson's universal League of Nations, I think that after the peace it will burst like a soap bubble. Great and powerful complexes of nations with hundreds of millions of inhabitants, armies of millions of men and exports amounting to thousands of millions, will be confronting each other. In the circumstances such small fractional nationalities will not be able to exist in complete independence, without seeking to lean on one side or the other. Just as there is no independent Belgium in the sense that it gravitates towards one side or the other, so it is not possible to conceive of a completely independent Lithuania, Balticum or Poland without that provisio.”

Gustav Stresemann (1878–1929) German politician, statesman, and Nobel Peace Prize laureate

1910s, Speech in the Reichstag, 18 March 1918

Harold Innis photo
Richard Mead photo
Marshall McLuhan photo

“The business of art is no longer the communication of thoughts or feelings which are to be conceptually ordered, but a direct participation in an experience. The whole tendency of modern communication…is towards participation in a process, rather than apprehension of concepts.”

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

Letter to Harold Adam Innis (14 March 1951), published in Essential McLuhan (1995), edited by Eric McLuhan and Frank Zingrone, p. 73
1950s

Alexandra Kollontai photo
Elon Musk photo

“In terms of the Internet, it's like humanity acquiring a collective nervous system. Whereas previously we were more like a… collection of cells that communicated by diffusion. With the advent of the Internet, it was suddenly like we got a nervous system. It's a hugely impactful thing.”

Elon Musk (1971) South African-born American entrepreneur

[Mann, Adam, Video: Wired’s Interview with SpaceX’s Elon Musk, http://www.wired.com/wiredscience/2012/04/elon-musk-hangout/, 18 August 2012, Wired, 26 April 2012]

Bill Evans photo
Norman Spinrad photo
Karen Armstrong photo

“Monotheism is essentially inimical to tribalism: it demands that a people unite in a single community.”

Karen Armstrong (1944) author and comparative religion scholar from Great Britain

Source: Muhammad: A Biography of The Prophet (2001), Chapter 6, The Satanic Verses

Ervin László photo
George W. Bush photo
Gillian Anderson photo

“Get out of the house. Find other human beings to communicate with. Read a book. Do yoga. Meditate. Be of service. That is one of the biggest single most things to get one out of oneself, is being of service to people who are less fortunate than ourselves.”

Gillian Anderson (1968) American-British film, television and theatre actress, activist and writer

When asked for a motivational advice — Reddit "The Reigning Queen of TV" here. Also known as "mom." Gillian Anderson here, AMA." https://www.reddit.com/r/IAmA/comments/20cavl/the_reigning_queen_of_tv_here_also_known_as_mom/#cg1tob1 (March 13, 2014)
2010s

George W. Bush photo
Andrew Dickson White photo
Robert T. Bakker photo
Nayef Al-Rodhan photo

“By promoting justice and thus the interests of the international community as a whole, a state will be able to make its influence over others sustainable and achieve its own national interest.”

Nayef Al-Rodhan (1959) philosopher, neuroscientist, geostrategist, and author

Source: Neo-statecraft and Meta-geopolitics (2009), p.147

Robert Mugabe photo
Adolf Hitler photo

“Yes, certainly, we jeopardize the liberty to profiteer at the expense of the community, and, if necessary, we even abolish it.”

Adolf Hitler (1889–1945) Führer and Reich Chancellor of Germany, Leader of the Nazi Party

Speech to the Workers of Berlin (10 December 1940)
1940s

Aga Khan IV photo

“A secure pluralistic society requires communities that are educated and confident both in the identity and depth of their own traditions and in those of their neighbours.”

Aga Khan IV (1936) 49th and current Imam of Nizari Ismailism

Address at the Leadership and Diversity Conference Gatineau, Quebec, Canada (19 May 2004)

Piero Manzoni photo
Anthony Crosland photo
Joseph Chamberlain photo

“What is to be the nature of the domestic legislation of the future? (Hear, hear.) I cannot help thinking that it will be more directed to what are called social subjects than has hitherto been the case.—How to promote the greater happiness of the masses of the people (hear, hear), how to increase their enjoyment of life (cheers), that is the problem of the future; and just as there are politicians who would occupy all the world and leave nothing for the ambition of anybody else, so we have their counterpart at home in the men who, having already annexed everything that is worth having, expect everybody else to be content with the crumbs that fall from their table. If you will go back to the origin of things you will find that when our social arrangements first began to shape themselves every man was born into the world with natural rights, with a right to a share in the great inheritance of the community, with a right to a part of the land of his birth. (Cheers.) But all these rights have passed away. The common rights of ownership have disappeared. Some of them have been sold; some of them have been given away by people who had no right to dispose of them; some of them have been lost through apathy and ignorance; some have been stolen by fraud (cheers); and some have been acquired by violence. Private ownership has taken the place of these communal rights, and this system has become so interwoven with our habits and usages, it has been so sanctioned by law and protected by custom, that it might be very difficult and perhaps impossible to reverse it. But then, I ask, what ransom will property pay for the security which it enjoys? What substitute will it find for the natural rights which have ceased to be recognized?”

Joseph Chamberlain (1836–1914) British businessman, politician, and statesman

Speech to the Birmingham Artisans' Association at Birmingham Town Hall (5 January 1885), quoted in ‘Mr. Chamberlain At Birmingham.’, The Times (6 January 1885), p. 7.
1880s

Richard Cobden photo
Barbara Hepworth photo

“The naturalness of life… the sense of community is, I think, a very important factor in an artist's life.”

Barbara Hepworth (1903–1975) English sculptor

"A Pictorial Biography" (Tate Publishing, London, 1970)
1961 - 1975

Samuel R. Delany photo

“Young writers take that most communal object, language, and perform on it that most individual act, creation.”

Appendix B, “Acknowledgments” (p. 447)
Neveryóna (1983)

Leo Tolstoy photo
Stephen Harper photo
Edward Heath photo
Lewis Mumford photo
Jerome Frank photo
Jorge Majfud photo
Jean Chrétien photo

“Canadian federalism is more than a form of government. It's also a system of values that allows different people in diverse communities to live and work together in harmony for the good of all.”

Jean Chrétien (1934) 20th Prime Minister of Canada

Source: My Years As Prime Minister (2007), Chapter Five, The Phony War, p. 115

Gloria Estefan photo

“I'm very excited about this wonderful opportunity to take part in the evolution of a company that is integral to the Hispanic community and a powerful force in all areas of the media.”

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

statement issued regarding appointment to board of directors of Univision Communications, miamiherald.com (June 9, 2007)
2007, 2008

Richard Cobden photo
David Gerrold photo
Edgar Bronfman, Sr. photo
Niklas Luhmann photo

“No matter how abstractly formulated are a general theory of systems, a general theory of evolution and a general theory of communication, all three theoretical components are necessary for the specifically sociological theory of society. They are mutually interdependent.”

Niklas Luhmann (1927–1998) German sociologist, administration expert, and social systems theorist

Luhmann (1982) The Differentiation of Society, Translated by Stephen Holmes and Charles Larmore. Columbia University Press, New York, 1982, pp. 261. Cited in: Loet Leydesdorff (2000) " Luhmann, Habermas, and the Theory of Communication http://www.leydesdorff.net/montreal.htm".

Bell Hooks photo

“While I expected serious, rigorous evaluation of my work, I was totally unprepared for the hostility and contempt shown me by women whom I did not and do not see as enemies. Despite their responses I share with them an ongoing commitment to feminist struggle. To me this does not mean that we must approach feminism from the same perspective. It does mean we have a basis for communication, that our political commitments should lead us to talk and struggle together. Unfortunately it is often easier to ignore, dismiss, reject, and even hurt one another rather than engage in constructive confrontation. Were it not for the overwhelmingly positive responses to the book from black women who felt it compelled them to either re-think or think for the first time about the impact of sexism on our lives and the importance of feminist movement, I might have become terribly disheartened and disillusioned. Thanks to them and many other women and men this book was not written in isolation. … Such encouragement renews my commitment to feminist politics and strengthens my conviction that the value of feminist writing must be determined not only by the way a work is received among feminist activists but by the extent to which it draws women and men who are outside feminist struggle inside.”

Acknowledgments https://books.google.com/books?id=ClWvBAAAQBAJ&pg=PT8.
Feminist Theory: From Margin to Center (1984)

Maurice Wilkes photo
Henrik Ibsen photo
Georges Simenon photo

“The fact that we are I don't know how many millions of people, yet communication, complete communication, is completely impossible between two of those people, is to me one of the biggest tragic themes in the world.”

Georges Simenon (1903–1989) Belgian writer

Interviewed in Paris Review, Summer 1955; reprinted in Malcolm Cowley (ed.) Writers at Work (New York: Viking Press, 1959) p. 153.

William H. Starbuck photo
John F. Kennedy photo
William Henry Harrison photo

“I have determined never to remove a Secretary of the Treasury without communicating all the circumstances attending such removal to both Houses of Congress.”

William Henry Harrison (1773–1841) American general and politician, 9th President of the United States (in office in 1841)

Inaugural address (March 4, 1841)

Tiffany Brar photo
Jacques Maritain photo
Peter F. Drucker photo

“…all earlier pluralist societies destroyed themselves because no one took care of the common good. They abounded in communities but could not sustain community, let alone create it.”

Peter F. Drucker (1909–2005) American business consultant

The New Pluralism Leader to Leader, No. 14 (Fall 1999)
1990s and later

“It is the general authority to undertake the establishment of religion through the revival of religious sciences, the establishment of the pillars of Islam, the organization of jihad and its related functions of maintenance of armies, financing the soldiers, and allocation of their rightful portions from the spoils of war, administration of justice, enforcement of [the limits ordained by Allah, including the punishment for crimes (hudud)], elimination of injustice, and enjoining good and forbidding evil, to be exercised on behalf of the Prophet… It is no mercy to them to stop at intellectually establishing the truth of Religion to them. Rather, true mercy towards them is to compel them so that Faith finds a way to their minds despite themselves. It is like a bitter medicine administered to a sick man. Moreover, there can be no compulsion without eliminating those who are a source of great harm or aggression, or liquidating their force, and capturing their riches, so as to render them incapable of posing any challenge to Religion. Thus their followers and progeny are able to enter the faith with free and conscious submission… Jihad made it possible for the early followers of Islam from the Muhajirun and the Ansar to be instrumental in the entry of the Quraysh and the people around them into the fold of Islam. Subsequently, God destined that Mesopotamia and Syria be conquered at their hands. Later on it was through the Muslims of these areas that God made the empires of the Persians and Romans to be subdued. And again, it was through the Muslims of these newly conquered realms that God actualized the conquests of India, Turkey and Sudan. In this way, the benefits of jihad multiply incessantly, and it becomes, in that respect, similar to creating an endowment, building inns and other kinds of recurring charities.… Jihad is an exercise replete with tremendous benefits for the Muslim community, and it is the instrument of jihad alone that can bring about their victory.… The supremacy of his Religion over all other religions cannot be realized without jihad and the necessary preparation for it, including the procurement of its instruments. Therefore, if the Prophet’s followers abandon jihad and pursue the tails of cows [that is, become farmers] they will soon be overcome by disgrace, and the people of other religions will overpower them.”

Shah Waliullah Dehlawi (1703–1762) Indian muslim scholar

Source: Quoted in Bonney, Jihad from Qur’an to bin Laden, 101-3 Quoted from Spencer, Robert (2018). The history of Jihad: From Muhammad to ISIS.
Source: Shah Waliullah Dehlawi: in: Muhammad Al-Ghazali, Socio-political Thought of Shah Wali Allah. (Also quoted in Jihād: From Qur’ān to bin Laden by Richard Bonney. Palgrave Macmillan, 2004. also in Spencer, Robert in The history of Jihad: From Muhammad to ISIS, 2018.)

Simone Weil photo

“The prestige which constitutes three-fourths of might is first of all made up of that superb indifference which the powerful have for the weak, an indifference so contagious that it is communicated even to those who are its object.”

Simone Weil (1909–1943) French philosopher, Christian mystic, and social activist

Le prestige, qui constitue la force plus qu'aux trois quarts, est fait avant tout de la superbe indifférence du fort pour les faibles, indifférence si contagieuse qu'elle se communique à ceux qui en sont l'objet.
in The Simone Weil Reader, p. 168
Simone Weil : An Anthology (1986), The Iliad or The Poem of Force (1940-1941)

Jonah Goldberg photo

“A busy buzzing bee is a lot like me, it works and it lives in community.”

Dawud Wharnsby (1972) Canadian musician

"A Busy Buzzing Bee"
A Picnic of Poems in Allah's Green Garden (2011)

Walter Cronkite photo
Maynard James Keenan photo
Eric Hobsbawm photo
Alfred de Zayas photo
Lewis M. Branscomb photo
Paul Otellini photo

“Decades of providing technology in growing volume and at decreasing costs have driven great gains for developing nations, communities and people worldwide, but there is still much to do.”

Paul Otellini (1950–2017) former president & CEO of Intel

Intel: "Intel Commits $1 Billion To Further Emerging Markets Strategy" https://www.intel.com/pressroom/archive/releases/2006/20060502corp.htm (2 May 2006)

John F. Kennedy photo
Grant Morrison photo
Muhammad photo

“Ka'b ibn 'Iyad said, "I heard the Messenger of Allah, may Allah bless him and grant him peace, say, "Every community has a trial, and the trial of my community is wealth."”

Muhammad (570–632) Arabian religious leader and the founder of Islam

Riyadh-as-Saliheen by Imam Al-Nawawi, volume 3, hadith number 481
Sunni Hadith
Variant: Jabir reported that the Messenger of Allah, may Allah bless him and grant him peace, said, "Every right thing is sadaqa."

John Gray photo