Over the years I have generated, and in a few instances collected, a number of dialogue related “Mantras,” that is, pithy sayings more or less related to Deep-Dialogue/Critical-Thinking. The point of expressing an idea or insight in a pithy, mantra-like manner is to help the reader/ listener to remember the denoted insight or idea in a way that will also bring with it the desired emotive connotations.

I have found in this regard that alliteration is also a helpful mnemonic device. For example, the Groundrules for interreligious, interideological dialogue that I published almost three decades ago are more easily remembered partly because I connected them in the minds of the reader/listener with the Ten Commandments, the Decalogue. In addition, the memory is also helped by the alliteration of the repetitive Ds: Dialogue Decalogue.

Below is a beginning list of such “Mantras” of mine and a few others. I would like to both share them with you, and invite you to send in other candidates for such “Dialogue Mantras” which we might likewise list here.

• Nobody knows Everything about Anything!
• Do not Abase the Ego; Expand it Infinitely—to Embrace All
• Age of Monologue: I Talk Only with Those who Think Like Me—or Should!
• Age of Dialogue: I Talk with Those who Think Differently from Me so I Can Learn!
• Dialogue Decalogue—Groundrules for Interreligious, Interideological Dialogue
• To Parrot the Past is to Pervert the Past.
• Principles are for Persons, not Persons for Principles
• Central for Christians: What Yeshua Thought, Taught and Wrought

The Sabbath is for Humans, not Humans for the Sabbath

No Peace without Peace among the Nations; no Peace among the Nations without Dialogue among the Religions.

Help Ever, Hurt Never!