Edward T. Hall Quotes

The essence of cross-cultural communication has more to do with releasing responses than with sending messages. It is more important to release the right response than to send the right message.

Culture hides more than it reveals, and strangely enough what it hides, it hides most effectively from its own participants.

One of the most effective ways to learn about oneself is by taking seriously the cultures of others. It forces you to pay attention to those details of life which differentiate them from you.

Each culture has its own characteristic manner of locomotion, sitting, standing, reclining, and gesturing.

Culture is not made up but something that evolves which is human.

The reason man does not experience his true cultural self is that until he experiences another self as valid he has little basis for validating his own self.

Viewing movies in very slow motion, looking for synchrony, one realizes that what we know as dance is really a slowed-down, stylized version of what human beings do whenever they interact.

Because we have put ourselves in our own zoo, we find it difficult to break out.

The information is in the people, not in your head.

The future for us is the foreseeable future. The South Asian, however, feels that it is perfectly realistic to think of a 'long time' in terms of thousands of years.

By their very nature bureaucracies have no conscience, no memory, and no mind.

The drive to learn is as strong as the sexual drive. It begins earlier and lasts longer

I may be able to spot arrowheads on the desert but a refrigerator is a jungle in which I am easily lost.

Age affects how people experience time.

Shakespeare reveals human nature brilliantly: he shines a light on our instinctive desire to dominate each other.

Behind every piece of paper lies a human situation.

Theatre is about people, not buildings. Incalculable damage has been done to the expert talent a company needs - from wardrobe to lighting technicians.

Two points that are very important points to remember and ask: Is it real and does it work?

. . . how man evolved with such an incredible reservoir of talent and such fantastic diversity isn't completely understood . . . he knows so little and has nothing to measure himself against.

We are only peripherally tied to the lives of others. It takes a long long time for us to become deeply involved with others, and for some this never happens.

I have found the study of organisms to be a truly exciting experience, always interesting and sometimes humbling.

Now, you can't tell me, we have the only God in the whole world. You can't tell me that nobody else has God.

The study of man is the study of his extensions.