“Political language is designed to make lies sound truthful and murder respectable, and to give an appearance of solidity to pure wind.”
"Politics and the English Language" (1946)
Context: Political language — and with variations this is true of all political parties, from Conservatives to Anarchists — is designed to make lies sound truthful and murder respectable, and to give an appearance of solidity to pure wind.
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George Orwell473
English author and journalist 1903–1950Related quotes
“Lies are easy to believe in but the truth sounds false.”
Carole Morin British writer
Lampshades (1991)
“The English are polite by telling lies. The Americans are polite by telling the truth.”
Malcolm Bradbury (1932–2000) English author and academic
Page 269.
Stepping Westward (1965)
Wilhelm Von Humboldt (1767–1835) German (Prussian) philosopher, government functionary, diplomat, and founder of the University of Berlin
As quoted in The Linguistic Relativity Principle and Humboldtian Ethnolinguistics : A History And Appraisal (1963) by Robert Lee Miller, and The Linguistic Turn in Hermeneutic Philosophy (2002) by Cristina Lafont
Context: The interdependence of word and idea shows clearly that languages are not actually means of representing a truth already known, but rather of discovering the previously unknown. Their diversity is not one of sounds and signs, but a diversity of world perspectives [Weltansichten]. … The sum of the knowable, as the field to be tilled by the human mind, lies among all languages, independent of them, in the middle. Man cannot approach this purely objective realm other than through his cognitive and sensory powers, that is, in a subjective manner.
Michael Thomas Ford (1968) American writer
Source: Suicide Notes
Joan Miró (1893–1983) Catalan painter, sculptor, and ceramicist
'Working notes of Miro, 1940 – 1941'; as quoted in: Calder Miró, ed. Elizabeth Hutton Turner / Oliver Wick; Philip Wilson Publishers, London 2004, p. 69
1940 - 1960
Ferdinand de Saussure book Course in General Linguistics
Source: Cours de linguistique générale (1916), p. 157; as cited in: Schaff (1962:11)
“Elegance of language must give way before simplicity in preaching sound doctrine.”
Girolamo Savonarola (1452–1498) Italian Dominican friar and preacher
Reported in Dictionary of Burning Words of Brilliant Writers (1895) edited by Josiah Hotchkiss Gilbert, p. 481