Shared Understanding Quotes

If you can get them to see the world as you do, they will think as you do.

Truth springs from argument amongst friends.

A proverb is one man’s wit and all men’s wisdom.

If we want to be heard we must speak in a language the listener can understand and on a level at which the listener is capable of operating.

You were able to sing something they related to instantly, because it was part of what you felt. It was part of what you had already traveled through. It's part of the people you were associating with daily. It was all of that.

Your knowing a thing is nothing, unless another knows you know it.

I'm always amazed at how records can make you feel like somebody else understands you.

The basic agreement between human beings, indeed what makes them human and makes them social, is language.

The usefullest truths are plainest; and while we keep to them, our differences cannot rise high.

When you're on the court with guys that know basketball, it's a universal language for us.

Love, yes. Word known to all men.

The anchor of all my dreams is the collective wisdom of mankind as a whole.

A lot of the songs on '2' are pretty personal, but even if I'm writing about something like that, I still tend to keep it pretty simple and open-ended. I like the idea of people listening to my album and it meaning something to me but maybe meaning something else to them.

… knowing as the man in the street always does

Nobody can discover the world for somebody else. Only when we discover it for ourselves does it become common ground and a common bond and we cease to be alone.

However spontaneous it seems, laughter always implies a kind of secret freemasonry, or even complicity, with other laughers, real or imaginary.

I wish that we could look into each other's faces, in each other's eyes, and see our own selves. I hope that the children have not been so scarred by their upbringing that they only think fear when they see someone else who looks separate from them.

Everybody knows what's going on. Even if they don't watch it they know what's happening.

Nobody sees reality whole; we all need others to show us the parts of it that they see better than we do. Nobody sees reality with total accuracy; we all need others to correct our own vision.

When I sit down with filmmakers, I feel like we speak the same language in a lot of ways. We watch the same movies and have the same influences. If anything, it creates a dialogue that makes my work more effective.

The great thing about fiction is you can talk about things without being didactic about them, but hopefully forge a connection with people and an understanding about a shared humanity that tells its own story.

Reality is no less precious if it presents itself to someone else. All are discoverers, and if we disenfranchise any, all suffer.

COMMUNICATION: If I had to pick a first rule of communication-the one practice above all others that opens the door to connecting with others-it would be to look for common ground. Too often people see communication as the process of transmitting massive amounts of information to other people. But that's the wrong picture. Communication is a journey. The more that people have in common, the better the chance that they can take that journey together.

Every now and then I have to teach directing. The thing about the theatre is that the most important thing you can do as a director is to make sure that everybody is in the same world - you have to create the world and make sure everyone buys into it.

There's one word that exists in every language on the face of the Earth and in every society since man began to speak. And the word is truth. And in every language it means exactly the same thing. Truth is . . . what you get other people to believe.