Joe Slovo Quotes

You should know that I've been hearing-impaired, not quite since birth, but I've been wearing hearing aids since I was 13, so I'm very conscious of the difficulty of voice communication.

I cannot be understood in three minutes.

It seems reasonable to envision, for a time 10 or 15 years hence, a "thinking center" that will incorporate the functions of present-day libraries together with anticipated advances in information storage and retrieval and ... a network of such centers, connected to one another by wide-band communication lines and to individual users by leased-wire services.

There is a culture among academics to be obscure. If you're too clear, you can't be saying anything interesting. The issue isn't word length. The issue is a commitment to speaking in a way an audience can understand.

Every single answer starts with the phrase 'I don't know.' But most of the time she does know, if I give her the time and the space in which to answer.

Oh why do we not say the important things, it would be so easy, and we are damned because we do not.

To understand is nothing, but to be understood-that is the problem and the source of anguish. The soul throbs and would have the other know-but can not and feels isolated. Then come gestures, words, awkward explanations and material symbols for imponderable outbursts of feeling-and the soul despairs.

To give truth to him who loves it not is but to give him more plentiful material for misinterpretation.

Most of my friends seem to be either dead, extremely deaf or living on the wrong side of Kent.

I don't understand why people never say what they mean. It's like the immigrants who come to a country and learn the language but are completely baffled by idioms. (Seriously, how could anyone who isn't a native English speaker 'get the picture,' so to speak, and not assume it has something to do with a photo or a painting?)

The Internet is merely a new means of communication, that's all it is. It serves the purpose of getting information, which it is fantastic at. I mean, I live by the Internet in terms of research and it's incredible - there's nothing that you can't find out about. It's not stopped me going to bookshops but I must say that I don't go into as many because any book I want.

I have the outsider's vision, which is creating wisdom I can share with the world. The fact that I am misunderstood has always given me an added impetus to work on communication to bridge the gap.

In what region of the earth ever so remote from us, in what corner of creation ever so far out of the range of our communication, does not some burden lightened, some bond loosened, some yoke lifted, some labor better remunerated, some new hope for despairing hearts, some new light or new liberty for the benighted or the oppressed, bear witness this day, and trace itself, directly or indirectly, back to the impulse given to the world by the successful establishment and operation of free institutions on this American continent?

For it is probable that when people talk aloud, the selves (of which there may be more than two thousand) are conscious of disserverment, and are trying to communicate but when communication is established there is nothing more to be said.

Banality is a symptom of non-communication. Men hide behind their cliches.

Your desire to communicate must be bigger than your relationship with the chaotic and unfair realities.

We get shy about saying things like I love you. Life is so short. It's crazy, that we hesitate to express our true thoughts to each other.

Communication is to relationships what breath is to life.

My resistance to communication work is because of 15 years with my former wife where we did all this work, but we never got to the core of anything.

I have trouble listening to people tell me about their dreams.

Bulk collection means all of your communications are being secretly intercepted. They are being stolen as they cross India, and they're being stored in these silos so that they can be rifled through at the convenience of secret agents, basically.

Language is the source of misunderstandings.

I want the ability to monitor high-tech communications among far-flung terrorists. I want to be able to have our people learn their plans before they strike. That's the key.

The reason husbands and wives do not understand each other is because they belong to different sexes.

...When we lift our voices tiny molehills of difference become great mountains of conflict.