Chester Bowles Quotes

Cinema is a medium that can translate ideas.

Translation is the art of failure.

Poetry is really a way of sharing feelings and ideas.

Not everything I do is gossip or bedroom. To the contrary, I think that's just an easy label to dismiss me and to dismiss the new medium.

We should have a great fewer disputes in the world if words were taken for what they are, the signs of our ideas only, and not for things themselves.

No one knows what women want!

A powerful idea communicates some of its strength to him who challenges it.

A woman will toss her head and a man will say, 'Oh she's trying to pick me up,' when in fact she's not doing that at all. So, women actually have to be a little careful with what they do, because men will pick up things that they didn't mean.

Words are slippery and thoughts are vicious.

We need to become more acutely conscious that words matter. None of us would deny that ideas and opinions matter, but we can sometimes be careless about how we express them. The words we choose to advance an idea, opinion, or point of view have a huge impact on how people react and respond to that view. When we use hyperbole, we increase the chances of being misunderstood and of promoting equally exaggerated counter-reactions, especially when people are reacting almost instantaneously.

The Pavlovian view of women voters - 'plug the words in, and they will respond' - sends a chill down my spine because it sounds like an adaptation of something I have written about communication between the sexes: When a woman tells a man about a problem, she doesn't want him to fix it; she just wants him to listen and let her know he understands.

With a movie, you have the power of putting out an idea about the world and for people to take it seriously.

Don't express your ideas too clearly. Most people think little of what they understand, and venerate what they do not.

Conversation is an abandonment to ideas, a surrender to persons.

All art is communication of the artists' ideas, sounds, thoughts; without that no one will support the artist.

My radar, after all these years of sanity, is still off when it comes to what people do or don't mean.

The blind won't admit that I have eyes in my head, and the deaf say that I'm dumb.

We cannot control the way people interpret our ideas or thoughts, but we can control the words and tones we choose to convey them. Peace is built on understanding, and wars are built on misunderstandings. Never underestimate the power of a single word, and never recklessly throw around words. One wrong word, or misinterpreted word, can change the meaning of an entire sentence - and even start a war. And one right word, or one kind word, can grant you the heavens and open doors.

Women, O, women! They'll find the baddest meanin' in your words & hold it up.

I don't know if you have noticed this, but it is quite possible for two human beings to have a conversation in which one or both parties involved has absolutely no idea what they're talking about.

He reflected. 'I know a lot of different kids of people; what I want is to show each of them how the others really are. You hear so many lies!

I want to reach people and express myself. You have to put up with the risk of being misunderstood if you are going to try to communicate. You have to put up with people projecting their own ideas, attitudes, misunderstanding you. But it’s worth being a public fool if that’s all you can be in order to communicate yourself.

My husband is always accusing me of being a context-free individual. He asks something and he has no idea where it came from or what it related to. I have to supply him with way more supplementary information than I ever have to supply my female friends.

It is impossible for ideas to compete in the marketplace if no forum for their presentation is provided or available.

To have ideas one must have imagination. To express ideas one must have science.