17 Quotes About Communication

Communication is the activity of conveying, receiving and exchanging information, as by speech, visuals, signals, writing or behavior.

We all think that we know how to communicate, and that we're always communicating effectively. But we so often forget that real communication between two parties - not just talking at a person or listening to someone - requires actually sharing information in such a way that both the message conveyor and the message receiver understand what is being said.

While that may seem simple, it's far too often easier said than done.

Let's face it, if I had a special secret for making sure you are instantly understood by others, or how to automatically understand everyone who communicates with you, I'd be a millionaire and this blog would have a more precise focus. But I don't, so instead, I have put together a collection of 17 inspirational quotes from some great minds that may have been on to something.

"First learn the meaning of what you say, and then speak." ~ Epictetus

"Grammar is the logic of speech, even as logic is the grammar of reason." ~ Richard Chenevix Trench

"Genius is the ability to put into effect what is on your mind." ~ F. Scott Fitzgerald

"Good communication is just as stimulating as black coffee, and just as hard to sleep after." ~ Anne Morrow Lindbergh

"The ability to simplify means to eliminate the unnecessary so that the necessary may speak." ~ Hans Hofmann

"There is only one rule for being a good talker - learn to listen." ~ Christopher Morley

"A word to the wise is infuriating." ~ Hunter S. Thompson

"The liberty of speaking and writing guards our other liberties." ~ Thomas Jefferson

"The most important things are the hardest to say, because words diminish them." ~ Stephen King

"Music . . . can name the unnameable and communicate the unknowable." ~ Leonard Bernstein

"The tongue is the only instrument that gets sharper with use." ~ Washington Irving

"Speak when you are angry - and you'll make the best speech you'll ever regret." ~ Dr. Laurence J. Peter

"The less people know, the more they yell." ~ Seth Godin

"If I am to speak ten minutes, I need a week for preparation; if fifteen minutes, three days; if half an hour, two days; if an hour, I am ready now." ~ Woodrow Wilson

"The mouth is made for communication, and nothing is more articulate than a kiss." ~ Jarod Kintz

"The single biggest problem in communication is the illusion that it has taken place." ~ George Bernard Shaw 

"If you have nothing to say, say nothing." ~ Mark Twain

13 Quotes About Inspiration

It has been easy to think creatively for client work, but inspiration for my own projects has been sparse lately.  There are ideas...  Few that truly excite me.

Excitement and inspiration are musts for great creative writing results, whether its a song, a novel, or copy for an ad. But I don't think that giving in to what basically amounts to "writer's block" helps anything, either. So here I am, powering through on the first Monday of 2013 with a post chalk-full of inspirational quotes with the hopes that I can stir up a little inspiration within myself and others.

Read on for 13 quotes about Inspiration.

"You can't wait for inspiration. You have to go after it with a club." ~ Jack London

"Human beings have speculated about the relationship between inspiration and insanity for centuries." ~ Patty Duke

"Don't judge each day by the harvest you reap but by the seeds that you plant." ~ Robert Louis Stevenson

"Inspiration is a farce that poets have invented to give themselves importance." ~ Jean Anouilh

"Change your thoughts and you change your world." ~ Norman Vincent Peale

"Inspiration usually comes during work, rather than before it." ~ Madeleine L'Engle

"Think with your whole body." ~ Taisen Deshimaru

"The moment of inspiration can come from memory, or language, or the imagination, or experience - anything that makes an impression forcibly enough for language to form." ~ Carol Ann Duffy

"Nothing is impossible, the word itself says 'I'm possible'!" ~ Audrey Hepburn

"Genius is one percent inspiration and ninety-nine percent perspiration." ~ Thomas A. Edison

"It is always the simple that produces the marvelous." ~ Amelia Barr

"A deadline is negative inspiration. Still, it's better than no inspiration at all." ~ Rita Mae Brown

"The power of imagination makes us infinite." ~ John Muir

15 Quotes About Writing

The act of writing serves purposes that range from sharing information to artistic expression, exposing injustices to perpetuating lies and more. Whether the final result is a novel, poem, journalistic article or even online marketing content, written word can be valuable, worthless, healing, poisonous, placating, taunting, all of the above, none of the above and an infinite combinations of other adjectives and descriptive phrases.

At the same time, without written works, valuable information, historical events, incredible stories and other knowledge of the past would be lost to time. Without writing – and reading – there would be so much we wouldn’t know that our current lives and lifestyle would likely not exist. In this post, read fifteen quotes describing this incredibly overlooked, everyday art form.

“Either write something worth reading or do something worth writing.” ~ Ben Franklin
 
“Words - so innocent and powerless as they are, as standing in a dictionary, how potent for good and evil they become in the hands of one who knows how to combine them.” ~ Nathaniel Hawthorne
 
“Fill your paper with the breathings of your heart.” ~ William Wordsworth
 
“Writing is a struggle against silence.” ~ Carlos Fuentes
 
“The maker of a sentence launches out into the infinite and builds a road into Chaos and old Night, and is followed by those who hear him with something of wild, creative delight.” ~ Ralph Waldo Emerson
 
“One must be drenched in words, literally soaked in them, to have the right ones form themselves into the proper pattern at the right moment.” ~ Hart Crane
 
“The difference between the right word and the almost right word is the difference between lightning and a lightning bug.” ~ Mark Twain
 
“The most valuable of all talents is that of never using two words when one will do.” ~ Thomas Jefferson
 
“We are all apprentices in a craft where no one ever becomes a master.” ~ Ernest Hemingway

“If there's a book you really want to read, but it hasn't been written yet, then you must write it.” ~ Toni Morrison
 
“A man will turn over half a library to make one book.” ~ Samuel Johnson

“Writing is both mask and unveiling.” ~ E.B. White
 
“Words are the most powerful drug used by mankind.” ~ Rudyard Kipling
 
“I love being a writer.  What I can't stand is the paperwork.” ~ Peter De Vries
 
“Great is the art of beginning, but greater is the art of ending.” ~ Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

10 Quotes About Creativity

Creativity and the act of creation are vital to the advancement of mankind. Without them, the human race would probably not exist. Creativity played a role in people learning how to make everything from fire, weapons and conversation, to the internet, Twitter and blogs like this one! In this post, read ten quotes on the subject to stoke your own creative fire.

"Creativity is a drug I cannot live without." ~ Cecil B. DeMille

“Creativity is inventing, experimenting, growing, taking risks, breaking rules, making mistakes and having fun.” ~ Mary Lou Cook

“The creative person is both more primitive and more cultivated, more destructive, a lot madder and a lot saner, than the average person." ~ Frank Barron

"There is no doubt that creativity is the most important human resource of all. Without creativity, there would be no progress, and we would be forever repeating the same patterns." ~ Edward de Bono 

“The creative person wants to be a know-it-all. He wants to know about all kinds of things-ancient history, nineteenth century mathematics, current manufacturing techniques, hog futures. Because he never knows when these ideas might come together to form a new idea. It may happen six minutes later, or six months, or six years. But he has faith that it will happen.” ~ Carl Ally

"The whole difference between construction and creation is exactly this: that a thing constructed can only be loved after it is constructed; but a thing created is loved before it exists." ~ Charles Dickens

"The creation of something new is not accomplished by the intellect but by the play instinct acting from inner necessity. The creative mind plays with the objects it loves." ~ Carl Jung

"Almost always, the creative dedicated minority has made the world better." ~ Martin Luther King, Jr.

"Creativity is a highfalutin word for the work I have to do between now and Tuesday." ~ Ray Kroc

“Creativity is contagious. Pass it on.” ~ Albert Einstein