Top 30 Edward T. Hall Quotes (2024 Update)

1. “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.”

— Edward T. Hall

Featured in: Culture Quotes

2. “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.”

— Edward T. Hall

3. “Culture hides more than it reveals and strangely enough what it hides, it hides most effectively from it’s own participants. Years of study have convinced me that the real job is not to understand foreign culture but to understand our own.”

— Edward T. Hall

4. “The best reason for exposing oneself to foreign ways is to generate a sense of vitality and awareness – an interest in life which can come only when one lives through the shock of contrast and difference.”

— Edward T. Hall

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

— Edward T. Hall

6. “The information is in the people, not in your head.”

— Edward T. Hall

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

— Edward T. Hall

8. “It is never possible to understand completely any other human being; and no individual will ever really understand himself – the complexity is too great and there is not the time to constantly take things apart and examine them.”

— Edward T. Hall

9. “Behind every piece of paper lies a human situation.”

— Edward T. Hall

10. “We should never denigrate any other culture but rather help people to understand the relationship between their own culture and the dominant culture. When you understand another culture or language, it does not mean that you have to lose your own culture.”

— Edward T. Hall

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

— Edward T. Hall

12. “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.”

— Edward T. Hall

13. “The study of man is the study of his extensions.”

— Edward T. Hall

14. “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.”

— Edward T. Hall

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

— Edward T. Hall

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

— Edward T. Hall

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

— Edward T. Hall

Featured in: Strong Quotes

18. “Each organism, no matter how simple or complex, has around it a sacred bubble of space, a bit of mobile territoriality which only a few other organisms are allowed to penetrate and then only for short periods of time.”

— Edward T. Hall

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

— Edward T. Hall

20. “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.”

— Edward T. Hall

21. “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.”

— Edward T. Hall

22. “Everything man is and does is modified by learning and is therefore malleable. But once learned, these behavior patterns, these habitual responses, these ways of interacting gradually sink below the surface of the mind and, like the admiral of a submerged submarine fleet, control from the depths. The hidden controls are usually experienced as though they were innate simply because they are not only ubiquitous but habitual as well.”

— Edward T. Hall

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

— Edward T. Hall

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

— Edward T. Hall

25. “Age affects how people experience time.”

— Edward T. Hall

26. “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.”

— Edward T. Hall

27. “Man is used to the fact that there are languages which he does not at first understand and which must be learned, but because art is primarily visual he expects that he should get the message immediately and is apt to be affronted if he doesn’t.”

— Edward T. Hall

28. “To increase density in a rat population and maintain healthy specimens, put them in boxes so they can’t see each other, clean their cages, and give them enough to eat. You can pile the boxes up as many stories as you wish. Unfortunately, caged animals become stupid, which is a very heavy price to pay for a super filing system!”

— Edward T. Hall

29. “It is characteristic of all extension systems to be treated as distinct and separate from the user and to take on an identity of their own. Religions, philosophies, literature, and art illustrate this. After a time, the extended system accretes to itself a past and a history as well as a body of knowledge and skills that can be learned. Such systems can be studied and appreciated as entities in themselves.”

— Edward T. Hall

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

— Edward T. Hall