Quotations: On Nonverbal Expression and the Human Condition
“When the eyes say one thing, and the tongue another, a
practiced man relies on the language of the first.”
Ralph Waldo Emerson
“In human social behaviour it looks as if the nonverbal
channel is used for negotiating interpersonal attitudes while the verbal
channel is used primarily for conveying information.”
Michael Argyle, Social Skills and Mental Health
“In joy the face expands, in grief it lengthens.”
Charles Darwin, The Expression of the Emotions in Man and
Animals
“There are some people who could hear you speak a
thousand words and still not understand you. And there are others who will
understand without you even speaking a word.”
Yasmin Mogahed
“Our outward expressions of emotion are one of the ways
that our conscious brain works out how we are feeling.”
Chris Daley, Unthink
“It’s striking to see how reliably we lean toward what
interests us and away from what repels us.”
Joe Navarro, Louder Than Words
“He that has eyes to see and ears to hear may convince
himself that no mortal can keep a secret. If his lips are silent, he chatters
with his fingertips; betrayal oozes out of him at every pore.”
Sigmund Freud
“The human body is the best picture of the human soul.”
Ludwig Wittgenstein
“Behaviour in the human being is sometimes a defence, a
way of concealing motives and thoughts, as language can be a way of hiding your
thoughts and preventing communication.”
Abraham Maslow
“A hungry man, if tempting food is placed before him, may
not show his hunger by any outward gesture, but he cannot check the secretion
of saliva.”
Charles Darwin, The Expression of the Emotions in Man and
Animals
“Nonverbal communication forms a social language that is
in many ways richer and more fundamental than our words.”
Leonard Mlodinow
“Your eyes will contradict your words if your words
contradict your thoughts and feelings.”
Sam Owen, 500 Relationships And Life Quotes
“Genuineness requires listening through both verbal and
nonverbal channels.”
Joseph Michelli
“Body language is essential for an actress, even if you
don't use your body in an athletic way. Just to be free, to use it like your
voice. A body can be small and have incredible violence. A body talks.”
Anne Parillau
“Nonverbal communication is an elaborate secret code that
is written nowhere, known by none, and understood by all.”
Edward Sapir
“Listen with an open mind, gather all the incoming
information, both verbal and non-verbal and be careful not to ignore things you
don’t wish to hear. Don’t make assumptions or jump to conclusions. The
punchline usually comes at the end!”
Graham Speechley
“Few realise how loud their expressions really are. Be
kind with what you wordlessly say.”
Richelle E. Goodrich, Making Wishes
“Nonverbal communication forms a social language that is
in many ways richer and more fundamental than our words.”
Leonard Mlodinow
“Experienced trial attorneys tend to rely on instinct
when picking a jury. You get an idea of the kind of people that you are looking
for and pay careful attention to their answers and body language.”
James Diamond
“With public speaking, practicing congruence is very
helpful - allowing the words to be expressed with the face and body. It helps
to think of simply "turning up the nonverbal volume”.”
Laurie Helgoe
“You have to think an awful lot about your motivations or
people's behavioural intentions or what their body language can indicate or
what's really going on or what makes people sometimes do the irrational things
they do.”
Ron Silver
“Fie, fie upon her!
There's language in her eye, her cheek, her lip,
Nay, her foot speaks; her wanton spirits look out
At every joint and motive of her body.”
William Shakespeare, Troilus and Cressida
“There are four ways, and only four ways, in which we
have contact with the world. We are evaluated and classified by these four
contacts: what we do, how we look, what we say, and how we say it.”
Dale Carnegie
“A blur of blinks, taps, jiggles, pivots and shifts ...
the body language of a man wishing urgently to be elsewhere.”
Edward R Murrow
“It’s hard to recall any memory if you’re experiencing
the opposite associated emotion. Act as you were to recall how you felt.
John B Smith
“If personality is an unbroken series of successful
gestures, then there was something gorgeous about him.”
F. Scott Fitzgerald, The Great Gatsby
“Our bodies are apt to be our autobiographies.”
Frank Gillette Burgess
“What you do speaks so loud that I cannot hear what you
say.”
Ralph Waldo Emerson
“The chimpanzees taught me a lot about nonverbal
communication. The big difference between them and us is that they don't have
spoken language. Everything else is almost the same: Kissing, embracing,
swaggering, shaking the fist.”
Jane Goodall
“Deafness has left me acutely aware of both the duplicity
that language is capable of and the many expressions the body cannot hide.”
Terry Galloway
“People may hear your words, but they feel your
attitude.”
John C Maxwell
“Eye rolling is one of the nonverbal signs that is pretty
much always aggressive.”
Steve Watts
“We are architects of our own experience. An approaching
stray dog can fill one man with joy and another with terror.”
John B Smith
“Most of us are pitch-perfect in detecting anger in the
first word of a telephone call, recognize as we enter a room that we were the
subject of a conversation, and quickly react to subtle signs that the driver of
the car in the next lane is driving dangerously.”
Daniel Kahneman, Thinking, Fast and Slow
“[War] is a highly planned and co-operative form of
theft.”
John Bronowski, The Ascent of Man
“You cannot get rid of anger, but you can learn how to
use it in a way that is good for you.”
Paul Ekman, Emotions Revealed
“When anger is expressed, the person on the receiving end
of the attack feels brutalised whether or not there has been any physical
violence; the old brain does not distinguish between choice of weapons.”
Harville Hendrix, Getting the Love You Want
“We are better disposed to people who give us
compliments, and that we like those people even when we know the compliments
are insecure.”
Dan Ariely, Behavioural Economics Saved My Dog
“If the eyes of a man or woman to whom you are attracted
meet yours, his or her lips will automatically part for a moment if the
attraction is mutual.”
Martin Lloyd-Elliott, Secrets of Sexual Body Language
“Women who are sexually interested in a man tend to have
more open-arm and open-leg positions during laughter, than those who are not
sexually interested.”
Geoff Beattie, Get the Edge
“Men who are sexually interested in a woman tend to show
more head tilts and forward leaning during laughter than those who are not.”
Geoff Beattie, Get the Edge
“The evidence for visual-spatial differences along gender
lines is, after height, the most robust of all the sex differences, and
extremely well-supported in psychological literature. A lot of these
differences could well be the results of hundreds and thousands of years of
male and female activity as hunters and gatherers.”
Gloria Moss, Why Men Like Straight Lines and Women Polka
Dots
“At one weak, baby girls can distinguish their mother’s
voice or the cry of another baby from other sounds in the room. Baby boys
can’t.”
Allan Pease, Why Men Don’t Listen and Women Don’t Read
Maps
“Not only do three-year-old girls start speaking earlier
than boys but a three-year-old girl has nearly twice the vocabulary of a
three-year-old boy, with her speech almost 100% comprehensible.”
Barbara Pease, Why Men Don’t Listen and Women Don’t Read
Maps
“When there’s a gap between what I’m thinking and what
I’m saying, it’s because the words coming out of my mouth are the only ones I
can access at that time.”
Naoki Higashida
“The most important thing in communication is hearing
what isn't said.”
Peter F Drucker
“A great attitude toward your approach to an
interview—demonstrated by your good posture—is everything.”
Cindy Ann Peterson
“I have noticed that persons in describing a horrid sight
often shut their eyes momentarily and firmly, or shake their heads, as if not
to see or to drive away something disagreeable; and I have caught myself, when
thinking in the dark of a horrid spectacle, closing my eyes firmly.”
Charles Darwin, The Expression of the Emotions in Man and
Animals
“The continuation of hand movement – regardless of form –
acts to hold the floor for the current speaker.”
Andrew W Ellis, The Psychology of Language and
Communication
“Illustrators are the mind punctuating thought; in fact,
think of them as servants of the mind.”
Greg Hartley, Get People to Do What You Want
“Both speech and gesture occur simultaneously, indicating
that they both emerge at the same time from the underlying mental
representation.”
Geoffrey Beattie, Rethinking Body Language
“The ability to simplify means to eliminate the
unnecessary so that the necessary may speak.”
Hans Hofmann
“During a conversation, listening is as powerful as
loving.”
Amit Kalantri, Wealth of Words
“The conscious mind is presented with the end result of
[the] analysis – what the emotional brain considers the significant
highlights.”
Joe Griffin, Human Givens
“To effectively communicate, we must realize that we are
all different in the way we perceive the world and use this understanding as a
guide to our communication with others.”
Anthony Robbins
“If you change the inside, you automatically change the
outside.”
John Dabrowski, Off The Wall
“The brain has different routes to the same destination
be that an emotion or behaviour.”
John B Smith
“We have faulty walnuts at the top of our spinal columns,
and these faulty walnuts misfire: they’re aggressive, they don’t remember what
they should, and they’re endowed with all sorts of very unhelpful drives.”
Alain de Botton, Do Humankind’s Best Days Lie Ahead?
“We are conscious not to understand ourselves or what we
will do, but to understand other people and predict what they will do.”
Chris Daley, Unthink
“Decisions are often based on an accumulation of small
details or observations. The final straw may be the most memorable but it’s no
more important than the others.”
John B Smith
“Gene expression is rarely an on-off toggle switch; it’s
much more like a volume dial on a traditional radio.”
Nessa Carey, The Epigenetics Revolution
“Until you make the conscious unconscious, it will direct
your life and you will call it fate.”
Carl Jung
“Our brains run mostly on autopilot, and the conscious
mind has little access to the giant and mysterious factory that runs below it.”
David Eagleman, Incognito
“The mechanisms of affective experience and emotional
behaviour are intimately entwined in comparatively ancient areas of the
mammalian brain.”
Jaak Panksepp, The Archaeology of Mind
“The utmost form of respect is to give sincerely of your
presence.”
Mollie Marti
“If you want a clear view of another person, you must
offer a glimpse of yourself.”
Jo-Ellan Dimitrius, Reading People
“Humans struggle to empathise with more than one person
at any one time, just as they struggle to put themselves in more than one pair
of shoes.”
John B Smith
“It seems we're wired to see other people as similar to
us, rather than different. At the root, as humans we identify the person we're
facing as someone like ourselves.”
Vittorio Gallese
“I do not ask the wounded person how he feels. I myself
become the wounded person.”
Walt Whitman
“If I look at the mass I will never act, if I look at the
one, I will.”
Mother Teresa
“Just seeing someone express an emotion can evoke that
mood, whether you realise you mimic the facial expression or not. This happens
to us all the time - there’s a dance, a synchrony, a transmission of emotions.
This mood synchrony determines whether you feel an interaction went well or
not.”
John Cacioppo
“When you hear a song for the first time, you listen to
the melody before you decipher the lyrics. It is just the same with
conversation.”
Leil Lowndes, How to Make Anyone Like You
“Judging is much easier than rejudging.”
John B Smith
“People's emotions are rarely put into words, far more
often they are expressed through other cues. the key to intuiting another's
feelings is in the ability to read nonverbal channels, tone of voice, gesture,
facial expression and the like.”
Daniel Goleman
“Emotion always has its roots in the unconscious and
manifests itself in the body.”
Irene Claremont de Castillejo
“An emotion is your brain’s creation of what your bodily
sensations mean, in relation to what is going on around you in the world.”
Lisa Feldman Barrett, How Emotions Are Made
“A second impression will try to confirm and reinforce
the first.”
John B Smith
“If we expect to suffer, we are anxious, if we have no
hope of relief, we despair.”
Charles Darwin, The Expression of the Emotions in Man and
Animals
“The areas of the brain that process smell and emotion
are as intertwined and codependent as any two regions in the brain could
possibly be.”
Rachel Herz, The Scent of Desire
“When an animal is alarmed it almost always stands
motionless for a moment, in order to collect its senses and to ascertain the
source of danger, and sometimes for the sake of escaping detection.”
Charles Darwin, The Expression of the Emotions in Man and
Animals
“Positive experiences are usually fleeting and often
forgettable, they don’t set off the mind’s alarm system.”
John B Smith
“Racial prejudice is not, in itself, rooted in our psyche
but our emphasis on visual differences and tribe preference is.”
Gordon Allport, The Nature of Prejudice
“Inborn behaviours and prejudices can be culturally
supressed or consciously overruled.”
John B Smith
“If you don’t seriously override your psychological
state, then you may make decisions based on an erroneous strategy and this
could lead to the wrong conclusion.”
Geoff Beattie, Get the Edge
“Social chameleons’ assume attitudes and outer
manifestations of those they want to emulate. Leopards’ make no point trying to
fit in.”
Norman King, The First Five Minutes
“When a person fibs, it’s often accompanied by an
adrenaline rush.”
Michael Cunningham
“The body never lies.”
Martha Graham
“I am a liar (by preterition), not an actor. My body is a
stubborn child, my language is a very civilized adult.”
Roland Barthes, A Lover's Discourse: Fragments
“In terms of nonverbal communication, by not seeing the
full face (whether it's bangs in the eyes of a woman or the beard of a man)
there can be some who perceive the individual is hiding something.”
Judith Rasband
“Display congruence between both sides of your body, or
others may infer conflicted thought.”
John B Smith
"You do not know, you cannot determine scientifically,
that I will not steal your money or your spoons. But inferentially I will not,
and inferentially you will have me as a guest.”
William I Thomas, Social Behaviour and Personality
“If you were allowed one wish for your child, seriously
consider wishing him or her optimism.”
Daniel Kahneman, Thinking Fast and Slow
“Life is 10% what happens to me and 90% of how I react to
it.”
Charles Swindoll
“Live life on the silver lining.”
John B Smith
“Don't underestimate the power of the nonverbal. You'd be
amazed how many people come in for interviews with poor posture, weak
handshakes, and blank stares.”
Nicole Williams
“Don't fake it till you make it. Fake it till you become
it.”
Amy Cuddy
“Electric communication will never be a substitute for
the face of someone who with their soul encourages another person to be brave
and true.”
Charles Dickens
“Social media removes our evolutionary precautions. No
one can see you blush, hear your voice go squeaky, feel your damp palms, nor
can you pick up on these all-important cues for working out how the other
person might be reacting?”
Susan Greenfield, Mind Change
“We're losing social skills, the human interaction
skills, how to read a person's mood, to read their body language, how to be
patient until the moment is right to make, or press, a point. Too much
exclusive use of electronic information dehumanises what is a very, very
important part of community life and living together.”
Vincent Nichols