Quotes About Conversation

We can either have a twenty-first-century conversation about morality and the human well-being - a conversation in which we avail ourselves of all scientific insights and philosophical arguments that have accumulated in the last two thousand years of human discourse - or we can confine ourselves to a first-century conversation as it is preserved in the Bible.

Conversation is a traffick; and if you enter into it, without some stock of knowledge, to ballance the account perpetually betwixtyou,--the trade drops at once: and this is the reasonwhy travellers have so little [good] conversation with natives,--owing to their [the natives'] suspicionthat there is nothing to be extracted from the conversationworth the trouble of their bad language.

Let the conversation flow at its own pace, don't try to rush it or control it. You need to let go and be part of the conversation.

It's hard these days to have a conversation, at least it is for me, about [Truman]Capote without "Good Night, and Good Luck" coming up in the same conversation.

The reading of all good books is indeed like a conversation with the noblest men of past centuries who were the authors of them, nay a carefully studied conversation, in which they reveal to us none but the best of their thoughts.

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.

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

If the original Facebook was the first five minutes [of a conversation] and the stream was the next 15, what I want to show you today is the rest-the next few hours of a deep engaging conversation.

I feel like this is a feminist issue and is going to be a part of a feminist conversation, and I wanted images of women of color in that conversation - feminism historically has left us out.

The moment when someone attaches you to a philosophy or a movement, then they assign all the baggage and all the rest of the philosophy that goes with it to you. And when you want to have a conversation, they will assert that they already know everything important there is to know about you because of that association. And that's not the way to have a conversation.

People often recommend, "Why do you ask?" as a good conversation stopper. But that really doesn't end the conversation, it just leaves the other person sputtering for a response. I like, "You'll be the first to know.".

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.

It concerns me when people frame the conversation about equal pay about the entertainment business. I don't want the wage gap issue to be viewed as this myopic problem, because it's not. It's in 98 percent of all businesses, and it's easy for people to dismiss this conversation when they think it's around white women entertainers. But this is about all women in America.

That's a really sad moment. When people in a democracy are afraid of having the conversation, because it might actually lead to a conclusion they don't like, as opposed to saying, let's have the conversation, and let's learn, and, you know, let's, let me try to persuade you, and if I'm not persuading you, then you try to persuade me. That's what we hope for.

Ultimately the bond of all companionship, whether in marriage or in friendship, is conversation, and conversation must have a common basis, and between two people of widely different culture the only common basis possible is the lowest level.

What is literature, really? Boiled down to a single sentence, I'd say it's this: an endless conversation about what it means to be human. And to read literature is to engage in that conversation.

Whistling together. Some kind of performance. I mean, not just a conversation, but a performance.

Books are love letters (or apologies) passed between us, adding a layer of conversation beyond our spoken words.

My wife will tell you it's the little things, like driving my boys to school on my days off so she can rest. We're not into PDA, but every time we end a phone conversation, we say 'sarang,' which means love in Korean.

Congress suffers a great deal of criticism for its partisan acrimony. But while we may disagree politically, and air our opposition in this chamber, it is the conversation behind the scenes that cements and defines our relationships.

After that, we had a short conversation about how your body can sometimes seem totally separate. She said her body can feel like a distant bureaucracy controlled by telegrams from her brain, and I said my body is sometimes like that of Mario Mario, being controlled with a Nintendo joypad. Mario's surname is Mario.

I'm more likely to strike up a conversation with a stranger than to try any antic or pickup lines.

I was watching TV at age 9 or 10, and my mom said that I came from the front room and I told her that I want to act. And she said if you want to do this at 18, then you can. It was a very simple story, yet, I do not even remember the conversation that I had with my mother. Until she reminded me of the story many years later.

I'm not a 'celebrity'. I'm not a big huge star and so when people see me it's usually to talk about something I've done and that's a great conversation to have.

Did you ever see so many pee-wee hats, Carl?" "They're beanies." "They call them pee-wees in Brooklyn." "But I'm not in Brooklyn." "But you're still a Brooklynite." "I wouldn't want that to get around, Annie." "You don't mean that, Carl." "Ah, we might as well call them beanies, Annie." "Why?" "When in Rome do as the Romans do." "Do they call them beanies in Rome?" she asked artlessly. "This is the silliest conversation.

Pharoahe Monch is a long time supporter of my music and I'm a long time supporter of his music so when we met each other it was almost like a natural occurrence.I met him before a few years earlier and we were just politicking with each other and we had a conversation about possibly doing something but our schedules have always been in conflict.

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

...when a phone call competes for attention with a real-world conversation, it wins. Everyone knows the distinctive high-and-dry feeling of being abandoned for a phone call, and of having to compensate - with quite elaborate behaviours = for the sudden half-disappearance of the person we were just speaking to. 'Go ahead!' we say. 'Don't mind us! Oh look, here's a magazine I can read!' When the call is over, other rituals come into play, to minimise the disruption caused and to restore good feeling.

That man is guilty of impertinence who considers not the circumstances of time, or engrosses the conversation, or makes himself the subject of his discourse, or pays no regard to the company he is in.

I suppose the difference between baby people and me is that I do not consider smiling while farting 'holding up your end of a conversation.

I like a book to be full of the memory of what it is, a voice in an endless conversation, and yet at the same time to be new.

The noise around us determines how we speak. And how we listen. Just as a conversation suffers in a war zone, art suffers in a culture built on noise. So does our enjoyment of it.

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.

It was a positive sign that the conversation took place, it's a sign of the depth of the friendship between Australia and Indonesia.

Well, my closest friends are still the ones that I went to school with, but it's nice to go to work, at the studios, and have people there that you're willing to talk to and have a good conversation with.

It's disingenous for me to say that I wasn't trying to write a moral novel. By its very nature as a novel about the Iraq War, Fobbit steps into the political conversation. There's no way to avoid that. I can appreciate that readers are probably going to line up on one side of the novel or the other. I hope they go to those polar extremes, actually.

I grew up with a lot of spirituality. It wasn't necessarily organized religion, because my mom was Jewish and my dad was Muslim. I went to Catholic school. There was a lot of conversation about comparative religions.

Become aware of internal, subjective, subverbal experiences, so that these experiences can be brought into the world of abstraction, of conversation, of naming, etc. with the consequence that it immediately becomes possible for a certain amount of control to be exerted over these hitherto unconscious and uncontrollable processes.

Statistics are the lifeblood of baseball. In no other sport are so many available and studied so assiduously by participants and fans. Much of the game's appeal, as a conversation piece, lies in the opportunity the fan gets to back up opinions and arguments with convincing figures, and it is entirely possible that more American boys have mastered long division by dealing with batting averages than in any other way.

Love is when you can sit in front of each other for hours not saying anything, yet feel like you've had the best conversation possible. Love is when you can spend hours on end thinking about each other even when planets apart!

the wasting of time is the most personal, most private, most intimate form of conversation with oneself, as well as with another.

That's what it is-it's jazz. It's just jazz. That's what the whole thing is about to me. It's about what's happening right now in this context. This conversation is jazz to a certain extent. It's improvisation. What appeals to me about music is the improvization. That's what I don't like about the media-they're not living it.

The dictionary describes a selfish person as one who is 'concerned excessively or exclusively with oneself: seeking pleasure or well-being without regard for others.' May we add, a selfish person is often one who refers to 'I,' 'me,' and 'mine' rather than to 'we,' 'ours,' 'yours,' or 'theirs.' This person is anxious to be in the limelight, to be on center stage in life's little dramas. He or she may be a poor listener, or a conversation monopolizer. Selfishness is the great unknown sin. No selfish person ever thought himself to be selfish.

A man's character may be learned from the adjectives which he habitually uses in conversation.

Using someone's name during a conversation was like a casual caress, like stroking their hair.

I was introduced to Mr. Davy, who has rooms adjoining mine (in the Royal Institution); he is a very agreeable and intelligent young man, and we have interesting conversation in an evening; the principal failing in his character as a philosopher is that he does not smoke.

I could sit right here and have a 15-minute conversation with somebody and change their whole life.