Quotes about conversation

We, the most powerful democracy in the world, have developed a strong norm against talking about politics. It's fine to talk about politics with people you agree with. But it is rude to argue about politics with people you disagree with. Political discourse becomes isolated, and isolated discourse becomes more extreme. We say what our friends want to hear, and hear very little beyond what our friends say.

I cannot hold with those who wish to put down the insignificant chatter of the world.

He had the true American taste for argument, argument as distinguished from conversation on the one hand and from oratory on the other. The long-drawn-out, meandering debate was, perhaps, the only art form he understood or relished, and this was natural since the argument is in a sense our only indigenous folk-art, and it is not the poet but the silver-tongued lawyer who is our real national bard.

"There are no two men in this world more similar than you and him," she told me. "And that's the worst thing for having a conversation."

A question isn't an argument, unless you think you know my answer.

I speak to everyone in the language they understand. That isn’t being slick. It’s being clear.

My, but I miss the days when we never talked to each other for weeks at a time.

[They] knew each other so well that there was often nothing to say. But without her there, [he] grew impatient with his own thoughts; they never came to a point, because there was no one to tell them to.

There’s so much that we don’t understand. And so much more that you don’t understand. We should tell each other more.

Atticus had said it was the polite thing to talk to people about what they were interested in, not about what you were interested in.

As you talk, so is your heart.

You’ll know what to say when the time comes. That’s the art, eh? What to say, and when to say it. And the rest is silence.