All my life I've been looking for someone intelligent to talk to.
Calm, open debate, and logical thought drive strength to its maximum effectiveness.
I have no wish to talk nonsense." "If you did, it would be in such a grave, quiet manner, I should mistake it for sense.
'Free speech' isn't speech at all if it's being used without listening, attention, or care.
Private, accidental, confidential conversation breeds thought. Clubs produce oftener words.
So much of what passes for conversation today is degraded. It's either about one-upmanship, or dreary trivia. Even the cut and thrust of wit and bons mots is a form of bedazzlement designed to stop conversations dead rather than broaden them.
Civilized discourse demands critical thinking, self-reflexiveness, sober-headed analysis.
Instant communication is not communication at all but merely a frantic, trivial, nerve-wracking bombardment of cliches, threats, fads, fashions, gibberish and advertising.
In the interchange of thought use no coin but gold and silver.
Conversation is interesting in proportion to the originality of the central ideas which serve as pivots and the fitness of the little facts and observations which are contributed by the talkers.
