Life & Wisdom Quote by J.B. Priestley

Priestley lands the punch with a neat little paradox: communication gets louder, faster, more technically “advanced,” and yet meaning thins out. The line works because it refuses the usual progress narrative. It doesn’t argue that phones or broadcasts are bad; it suggests the very sophistication of the channel becomes a substitute for the human act it’s supposed to serve. “Elaborate” implies ornament, infrastructure, and performance - a system built to impress itself. “The less we communicate” isn’t about silence; it’s about noise that crowds out attention, intimacy, and accountability.

The intent feels less like nostalgia than suspicion. Priestley, writing in a century that watched mass media scale from print to radio to television, understood how communication can be industrialized. When you can reach everyone, you’re tempted to speak to no one in particular. The message gets optimized for breadth, safety, and repeatability. What gets lost is friction: the pauses, the vulnerability, the risk of being misunderstood by a real person who can talk back.

Subtext: elaborate systems invite managerial language and mediated selves. They reward slogans, branding, and the illusion of connection - the feeling that because information moves, understanding must be happening. Priestley is also pointing at power. Communication technologies don’t just transmit; they organize publics, shape consensus, and let institutions talk at people rather than with them.

It’s a warning that reads cleaner now than ever: the more tools we add, the more disciplined we must be about what we’re actually trying to say, and to whom.