Quotes About Conversation

One of the central challenges for global conversation today is to find ways of getting to understand very different views about gender and sexuality. But we should start by recognizing that these issues are subjct to disputation within every society as well as across societies. We need a global conversation that recognizes that we have these very different views. Next, try to agree on fundamental rights: things we think every person is entitled to. Finally, if we're convinced that what a government or a society elsewhere is doing to some people is badly wrong and the conversation gets nowhere.

There may be an art to conversation, and some are better at it than others, but conversation's virtue lies in randomness and possibility: people, without a plan, could speak a spontaneous, unexpected truth, because revelation rules. Telling words recur in this smart, generous conversation between Stephen Andrews and Gregg Bordowitz: patience, responsibility, feminism, ethics, cosmology, AIDS, gift, freedom, mortality.

Let us not look east and west for materials of conversation, but rest in presence and unity. A just feeling will fast enough supply fuel for discourse, if speaking be more grateful than silence. When people come to see us, we foolishly prattle, lest we be inhospitable. But things said for conversation are chalk eggs. Don't say things. What you are stands over you the while, and thunders so that I cannot hear what you say to the contrary.

In the age of the internet, with all of its problems, over time, the very fact that individuals can join the conversation creates the opportunity for the emergence of - for the re-emergence of a genuine conversation of democracy.

It's as if every conversation with a woman was a test, and men always failed it, because they always lacked the key to the code and so they never quite understood what the conversation was really about.

And there is quite a different sort of conversation around a fire than there is in the shadow of a beech tree.... Four dry logs have in them all the circumstance necessary to a conversation of four or five hours, with chestnuts on the plate and a jug of wine between the legs. Yes, let us love winter, for it is the spring of genius.

Bill Shorten should - either knows that or at least he should know it and for him to change the conversation by proposing - by suggesting a proposal significantly more adventurous than where the conversation has been up until now was a very unhelpful intervention.

The most important thing is to have the conversation, and let people who do make mistakes feel comfortable enough to continue the conversation.

I think, if you can only talk about your stuff in a jargonistic way, you're not as smart as you think. You're alienating people who deserve to have a conversation, or a place in the conversation. If you take the complete inverse and are staunchly anti-intellectual, then I think there's a certain amount of resentfulness in that. There's something about that standpoint that feels a little bit insecure.

I have not made any suggestions about climate change. This is more about blending or shifting the conversation about the environment versus the economy. It's just such an old, outdated conversation.

Conversations...begin with the sort of imaginative engagement you get when you read a novel or watch a movie or attend to a work of art that speaks from some place other than your own. So I'm using the word 'conversation' not only for literal talk but also as a metaphor for engagement with the experience and ideas of others. And I stress the role of the imagination here because the encounters, properly conducted, are valuable in themselves. Conversation doesn't have to lead to consensus about anything, especially not values; it's enough that it helps people get used to one another.

This, I believe, is the appropriate image of human intercourse -- appropriate because it recognizes the qualities, the diversities, and the proper relationships of human utterances. As civilized human beings, we are the inheritors, neither of an inquiry about ourselves and the world, nor of an accumulating body of information, but of a conversation, begun in the primeval forests and extended and made more articulate in the course of centuries. It is a conversation which goes on both in public and within each of ourselves.

Democracy begins in human conversation. A democratic conversation does not require elaborate rules of procedure or utopian notions of perfect consensus. What it does require is a spirit of mutual respect-people conversing critically with one another in an atmosphere of honesty and shared regard.

If the conversation people think is coming is the 'death panel' conversation, that's a total failure.

If you're trying to make someone happy, you gotta try and make them happy. If you're trying to have a normal conversation, you've got to have a normal conversation. If you're trying to make them sad, you've got to make them sad. I think that's how you get real performances out of people.

I regret that after 30 years of writing columns in this market, including ten with this newspaper that I love very much, this local conversation has come to an end. However, I believe that if the newspapers of the country pool their resources, we can send an Arnold-Schwartzenegger-style robot back in time to kill the inventor of the Internet, and then our future will be much brighter.

That amenity which the French have developed into a great art . . . conversation.

Ultimately the bond of all companionship, whether in marriage or in friendship, is conversation.

Success is a balance thing, it's about work and play together, so we need to work on how we embrace that. The conversation we need to keep having is how women and businesses learn to embrace women having children.

CONVERSATION is the vehicle for change.

I love conversation and the sharing of different thoughts and philosophies. That kind of stuff always makes me happy. I don't mind interviews, either - I like doing them.

The primary use of conversation is to satisfy the impulse to talk.

LADY STUTFIELD I adore silent men. MRS ALLONBY Oh, Ernest isn't silent. He talks the whole time. But he has got no conversation. What he talks about I don't know. I haven't listened to him for years.

Nobody else knows your reason for being. You do. Your bliss guides you to it. When you follow your bliss, when you follow your path to joy, your conversation is of joy, your feelings are of joy - you're right on the path of that which you intended when you came forth into this physical body.

If I can enjoy a joke at the expense of another; if I can in any way slight another in conversation, or even in thought, then I know nothing of Calvary love.

I have learned so much more about Islam in conversation with Jews and Christians and Hindus. I feel like that is part of the beauty of life on Earth - that we discover and develop what it means to be Muslim or Christian or Jewish not in isolation from others, but precisely in relationship with others.

Begin with art, because art tries to take us outside ourselves. It is a matter of trying to create an atmosphere and context so conversation can flow back and forth and we can be influenced by each other.

The universe must be full of voices, calling from star to star in a myriad tongues. One day we shall join that cosmic conversation.

Most of us have very clear memories of the self-critical internal conversation running on in our heads while we were playing poorly, and yet it often seems that we hardly remember noticing it at all while we were playing well.

We sit for a few more moments, although there's really nothing left to say. This is new to me, too, an entire conversation that takes place in silence, because the heart has its own language. I will remember what Eric says even though he doesn't say a word. I will tell it to her.

Conversation: The slowest form of human communication.

I am, I must confess, suspicious of those who denounce others for having too much sex. At what point does a healthy amount become too much? There are, of course, those who suffer because their desire for sex has become compulsive; in their case the drive (loneliness, guilt) is at fault, not the activity as such. When morality is discussed I invariably discover, halfway into the conversation, that what is meant are not the great ethical questions but the rather dreary business of sexual habit, which to my mind is an aesthetic rather than an ethical issue.

The act of nutrition is not a purely physiological event... The family meal is a formality that cultivates in us... a capacity for sharing, generosity, thoughtfulness, a talent for civilized conversation.

When I'm writing, my neural pathways get blocked. I can't read. I can barely hold a conversation without forgetting words and names. I wish I could wear the same clothes and eat the same food each day.

There's times when you're having dinner with a good friend and you're in the middle of a conversation and somebody comes up and cuts you off. Can you sign this? Can I take a picture with you? I'm adjusting to all the attention.

Wit is the salt of conversation, not the food.

Yes, I, well, when I write, as often as I can, I try to write as if I'm talking to people. It doesn't always work, and one shouldn't always try it, but I try and write as if I am talking, and trying to engage the reader in conversation.

Flirting? We were merely indulging in a little risqué conversation," Magnus said, offended. "When I begin to flirt, I assure you the entire room will know. My flirtations cause sensations.

Reserve some hours daily to examine yourself and fortune; for if you embark yourself in perpetual conversation or recreation, you will certainly shipwreck your mind and fortune.

What was the point of even having a conversation when words couldn't be trusted?

In the middle of a conversation, she'll frequently say something like, "Young people are heartless, they don't have any respect anymore." I nod agreement in hopes that she'll stop right there, but secretly I'm convinced that the heart is the same as it's always been; there's simply less hypocrisy, that's all. Young people aren't naturally selfish, any more than old folks are naturally wise. Your age doesn't have anything to do with whether you're sensitive or shallow; it's a question of the path your life takes.

You have to figure out a way to endure that little bit of time with the media. Any question they ask you; beautiful thing is, you get the last word. You can spin it any way you want to…If you can go third person on yourself, you can sit down and have a 10-15 minute conversation.

In real life, I try to be honest but not overshare. There are people that turn every conversation into a therapy session and you want to start charging them.

I think that certainty is a closed door, It's the end of the conversation. Doubt is an open door.

I have a constitutional weakness in which I am very easily distracted by flashing lights. If there is a TV on in the room, I can't have a conversation with you. I won't eat, I won't sleep, I'll just meld with my couch.

Prayer is a conversation with God, but prayer is no substitute for work.

A man may forgive many wrongs, but he cannot easily forgive anyone who makes it plain that his conversation is tedious.

To feel a full and untrammeled joy is to have become fully generous; to allow our selves to be joyful is to have walked through the doorway of fear, the dropping away of the anxious worried self...the vulnerability of happiness felt suddenly as a strength, a solace and a source, the claiming of our place in the living conversation.