We think of speaking as something we do naturally, without any effort. But like playing music, it requires attention and knowledge and practice.
Interpretation
Speaking well is not an innate ability but a skill that requires dedication and practice.
The quote by Theodore Zeldin emphasizes that speaking, often perceived as an effortless act, is in fact a skill that demands conscious effort, understanding, and continuous practice, much like learning to play a musical instrument. This analogy serves to remind us that effective communication is a craft that can be honed over time with the right approach and commitment.
In practice
This quote can be used in a workshop about public speaking to encourage participants to practice.
Conversation is a meeting of minds with different memories and habits. When minds meet, they don't just exchange facts: they transform them, reshape them, draw different implications from them, engage in new trains of thought. Conversation doesn't just reshuffle the cards: it creates new cards.
So much of what passes for conversation today is degraded. It's either about one-upmanship, or dreary trivia. Even the cut and thrust of wit and bons mots is a form of bedazzlement designed to stop conversations dead rather than broaden them.
It is in the power of everybody, with a little courage, to hold out a hand to someone different, to listen, to attempt to increase, by even a tiny amount, the quantity of kindness and humanity in the world.
I think one of the most important changes of our time has been our attitude to fear. Every civilisation defends itself by keeping fears out and saying 'we protect you from fear'. But it also produces new fears and throughout history people have changed the kind of fears which have worried them.
Conversation creates a new kind of network within organizations. Current networks are used for competitive advantage, but conversation is focused on encouraging people to realize their potential.
However fascinating you may think you are, there is a limit to what you can know about yourself.
You see, unlike in the movies, there is no THE END sign flashing at the end of books. When I've read a book, I don't feel like I've finished anything. So I start a new one.
Speak English!' said the Eaglet. 'I don't know the meaning of half those long words, and I don't believe you do either!
It is this simplicity that makes the uneducated more effective than the educated when addressing popular audiences-makes them, as the poets tell us, 'charm the crowd's ears more finely.' Educated men lay down broad general principles; uneducated men argue from common knowledge and draw obvious conclusions.
Learning without thought is labor lost; thought without learning is perilous.
Examinations are formidable even to the best prepared, for the greatest fool may ask more than the wisest man can answer.
Communication of science as subject-matter has so far outrun in education the construction of a scientific habit of mind that to some extent the natural common sense of mankind has been interfered with to its detriment.
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