I think the written word is probably the best medium of communication because you have time to reflect, you have time to choose your words, to get your sentences exactly right. Whereas when you're being interviewed, say, you have to talk on the fly, you have to improvise, you can change sentences around, and they're not exactly right.
Interpretation
Written communication allows for careful reflection and precision in word choice, unlike spontaneous speaking.
In this quote, Richard Dawkins emphasizes the advantages of written communication over verbal spontaneity. He suggests that the written word facilitates a thoughtful process where one can carefully select vocabulary and construct sentences with precision, leading to clearer and more accurate expression compared to the often imperfect nature of impromptu speaking during interviews or discussions.
In practice
In a writing workshop to highlight the importance of drafting and editing.
No educated person believes the Adam and Eve myth nowadays, but it's surprising how many parents think that it's somehow fun to pass on this falsehood to their children...I would want to argue that the truth of evolution is more interesting and more poetic
If the history-deniers who doubt the fact of evolution are ignorant of biology, those who think the world began less than ten thousand years ago are worst than ignorant, they are the deluded to the point of perversity.
The population of the U.S. is nearly 300 million, including many of the best educated, most talented, most resourceful, humane people on earth. By almost any measure of civilised attainment, from Nobel prize-counts on down, the U.S. leads the world by miles.
When you make machines that are capable of obeying instructions slavishly, and among those instructions are 'duplicate me' instructions, then of course the system is wide open to exploitation by parasites.
Even if not a single fossil has ever been found, the evidence from surviving animals would still overwhelmingly force the conclusion that Darwin was right.
The bitter hatreds that now poison Middle Eastern politics are rooted in the real or perceived wrong of the setting up of a Jewish State in an Islamic region. In view of all that the Jews had been through, it must have seemed a fair and humane solution. Probably deep familiarity with the Old Testament had given the European and American decision-makers some sort of idea that this really was the historic homeland of the Jews.
So if you aspire to be a good conversationali st, be an attentive listener.
A talk is a voyage. It must be charted. The speaker who starts nowhere, usually gets there.
The ability to speak well is the shortcut to distinction.
Listening is not understanding the words of the question asked, listening is understanding why the question was asked in the first place.
The truth isn't the truth until people believe you, and they can't believe you if they don't know what you're saying, and they can't know what you're saying if they don't listen to you, and they won't listen to you if you're not interesting, and you won't be interesting unless you say things imaginatively, originally, freshly.
You need to tell the truth to the audience, or they will throw a brick through the TV. They'll turn you off.
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