The Pen Is Mightier Than The Sword

No need to hit people over the head to teach them that words can hurt.
Sticks And Stones May Break My Bones But Words Can Never Hurt Me isn't true.
Words can move people, cause heartache, internal injury and death, even from a distance.

Except for babes ... Born Yesterday ... humans harm one another, knowingly, with words;
who hasn't experienced the visceral effects from an insult - or hasn't imagined how others
feel about: Making The Punishment Fit The Crime when accused of wrongdoing.

Nevertheless! Tenderness, friendliness, persons with helpful verbal intentions also exist!
Older and younger, during school - and later - millions of humans talk in generous ways.
And so do behaviorists whose recommendations follow from the conditioning chamber
where individual animals, those patient customers who are always right, work for grain.

The quotes - below - are relevant to my professional anchor:  TEAB, The Experimental
Analysis of Behavior that records how environmental factors can modify and maintain
the rate of behavior, over certain periods of time.
For each quotation, a heading captures some conceptual generalisation.
Readers and writers, speakers and listeners, you are invited to add jokes, comments and
anecdotes, that hold special significance for you.

Doubts
I believe in looking reality straight in the eye and denying it.
Garrison Keillor (1942-) American humorist, storyteller and radio personality.

Jogging the memory
People need to be reminded more often than they need to be instructed.
Samuel Johnson (1709-1784) English essayist, moralist and lexicographer.

Corroboration
History does not repeat itself. Historians repeat each other.
Arthur James Balfour (1848 - 1930) British statesman, Prime Minister 1902-5
   
Attending
Monologue is a person talking to himself; dialogue is when two people
talk to themselves. Shaike Ophir (1929-1987) Israeli actor and comedian.

Rehabilitation
Keep your thoughts positive because your thoughts become your words.
Keep your words positive because your words become your behaviors.
Keep your behaviors positive because your behaviors become your habits.
Keep your habits positive because your habits become your values.
Keep your values positive because your values become your destiny.
Mohandas Ghandi (1869-1948) influential ideological leader of India, advocating
nonviolent civil disobedience

Democratic Hawks and Doves
It is useless for the sheep to pass resolutions in favor of vegetarianism, while
the wolf remains of a different opinion.   William Ralph Inge (1860-1954)
English author, Dean of St. Paul's Cathedral, Cambridge professor of divinity. 

Social survival 
The ultimate weakness of violence is a descending spiral, begetting the very
thing it seeks to destroy.  Instead of diminishing evil, it multiplies it. ... In fact,
violence merely increases hate ... Darkness cannot drive out darkness: only light
can do that.  Hate cannot drive out hate: only love can do that.
Martin Luther King, Jr. (1929-1968) American clergyman, leader in the African-American
Civil Rights Movement

Adding Good to Good
Try and leave this world a little better than you found it and when your turn comes
to die, you can die happy in feeling that at any rate you have not wasted your time
and have done your best.  Lord Baden-Powell (1857-1941) founder of the Scout Movement
    
Down-To-Earth Science
The mind is like a parachute, it works best when it is opened.
14th. Dalai Lama, Tenzin Gyatso (1936-) Buddhist spiritual leader, advocates collective action for
viable environments.

Nature and Nurture
Don't say the world owes you anything. The world owes you nothing, it was here first
... a long time before you were.
Adapted from Mark Twain (1835-1910) American author and humorist

Hope...
Beware how you take hope away from any human being.
Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. (1809-1894) American physician, professor and medical reformer.

Hope is itself a species of happiness, and perhaps the chief happiness this world has to
offer. Samuel Johnson (1709-1784)

Hope is definitely not the same thing as optimism.  It is not the conviction that
something will turn out well, but the certainty that something makes sense,
regardless of how it turns out. Vaclav Havel (1936-) Czech playwright and politician; the last
President of Czechoslovakia (1989-92), the first President of the Czech Republic (1993-2003)

Looking For Trouble?
A cucumber should be well sliced, dressed with pepper and vinegar, and then thrown
out. Samuel Johnson (1709-1784)

Trial-and-Error
A man says to his doctor, "Doctor, I think my wife is going deaf, what should I do?"
The doctor says, "You could talk to her from a distance and if she doesn't respond,
move closer until she hears you. Then you'll know."
The man goes home, sees his wife at the kitchen sink with her back to him, and, from
across the room, he says, "Honey, what's for dinner?" No reply.  So he comes closer.
"Honey, what's for dinner?" No response. He comes closer still.  And then she turns,
looks at him, and she says, "For the third time, we're having chicken salad." 
Adapted from David Yezzi, These are the poems, folks: The New Criterion

Private and Public Events
My face goes hot, my tongue twitchy. I don't know what to say to her. 
All I know is, I ain't saying it. And I know she ain't saying what she want a say either
and it's a strange thing happening here cause nobody saying nothing and we still
managing to have us a conversation.
Kathryn Stockett, American writer - The Help, 2009