Richard Huelsenbeck (1892–1974) German poet
as quoted in The Sound of Poetry / The poetry of Sound, ed. Marjorie Perloff & Craig Dworkin; University of Chicago Press, 2009, p. 310, note 22
a critic on the sound-poetry of Dadaist Hugo Ball
“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. … 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.”
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.
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Géza Révész (1878–1955) Hungarian psychologist and musicologist
Footnote at pp. 126-127; As cited in: Adam Schaff (1962). Introduction to semantics, p. 313-314
The Origins and Prehistory of Language, 1956
Thich Nhat Hanh (1926) Religious leader and peace activist
The Sun My Heart (1996)
Context: There is no phenomenon in the universe that does not intimately concern us, from a pebble resting at the bottom of the ocean, to the movement of a galaxy millions of light years away. Walt Whitman said, "I believe a blade of grass is no less than the journey-work of the stars...." These words are not philosophy. They come from the depths of his soul. He also said, "I am large, I contain multitudes." This might be called a meditation on "interfacing endlessly interwoven." All phenomena are interdependent. When we think of a speck of dust, a flower, or a human being, our thinking cannot break loose from the idea of unity, of one, of calculation. We see a line drawn between one and many, one and not one. But if we truly realize the interdependent nature of the dust, the flower, and the human being, we see that unity cannot exist without diversity. Unity and diversity interpenetrate each other freely. Unity is diversity, and diversity is unity. This is the principle of interbeing.
Joseph Beuys (1921–1986) German visual artist
Quote of Caroline Tisdall, 1979, p. 210; as cited in Joseph Beuys and the Celtic Wor(l)d: A Language of Healing, Victoria Walters, LIT Verlag Münster, 2012, p. 180
1970's
Marshall McLuhan (1911–1980) Canadian educator, philosopher, and scholar-- a professor of English literature, a literary critic, and a …
Source: 1960s, The Gutenberg Galaxy (1962), p. 136
Ernst von Glasersfeld (1917–2010) German philosopher
Von Glasersfeld (1989, p. 444) cited in: Wolff-Michael Roth (2011) Passibility: At the Limits of the Constructivist Metaphor. p. 110
George Orwell book Politics and the English Language
"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.
Dean Koontz (1945) American author
Source: Innocence
Anantanand Rambachan (1951) Hindu studies scholar
Source: The Nature and Authority of Scripture (1995), p. 20
Context: The famous Rgveda text, "One is the Truth, the sages speak of it differently" (1.64.46), is often employed to explain away doctrinal differences as merely semantic ones. The point of this text, as its context makes quite clear, is not really to dismiss the significance of the different ways in which we speak of the One or to see these ways as equally valid. The text is really a comment on the limited nature of human language. Such language must by nature be diverse in its attempts to describe that which is One and finally indescribable. The text, however, is widely cited in ways that seem to make interreligious dialogue redundant.
