“Any cipher can be broken, any code can be compromised. But the most exact academic knowledge of a language gives no clue to its slang, its colloquial allusions, its half statements, over statements, and inverted meanings.”

— Robert A. Heinlein , book Sixth Column

Source: Sixth Column (1949; originally serialized in 1941), Chapter 9 (p. 113)

Adopted from Wikiquote. Last update June 3, 2021. History

Help us to complete the source, original and additional information

Do you have more details about the quote "Any cipher can be broken, any code can be compromised. But the most exact academic knowledge of a language gives no clu…" by Robert A. Heinlein?

Robert A. Heinlein 557

American science fiction author 1907–1988

Related quotes

“The fiction of an ideal language composed of pure atomic statements is as metaphysical as the fiction of Laplace's 'spirit'. Scientific language, with its ever growing equipment of systematic symbol formations, can by no means be regarded as an approximation to such an ideal language.”

Otto Neurath (1882–1945) austrian economist, philosopher and sociologist

Source: 1930s, "Protocol Statements" (1932), p. 91

“Any general statement is like a cheque drawn on a bank. Its value depends on what is there to meet it.”

Ezra Pound book ABC of Reading

Source: ABC of Reading (1934), p. 25

“Gödel's theorem shows conclusively that in pure mathematics reductionism does not work. To decide whether a mathematical statement is true, it is not sufficient to reduce the statement to marks on paper and to study the behavior of the marks. Except in trivial cases, you can decide the truth of a statement only by studying its meaning and its context in the larger world of mathematical ideas.”

Freeman Dyson (1923) theoretical physicist and mathematician

The Scientist As Rebel (2006)

“A perfectly true thought, expressed in very sound terms, can satisfy the reason without giving any impression of the Beautiful; but in that case certainly there is something false in its statement. It is essential that Truth be in Glory. Splendor of style is not a luxury. It is a necessity.”

Léon Bloy (1846–1917) French writer, poet and essayist

Source: Pilgrim of the Absolute (1947), p. 88

“Images apparently occupy a curious position somewhere between the statements of language, which are intended to convey a meaning, and the things of nature, to which we only can give a meaning.”

Ernst Gombrich (1909–2001) art historian

E. H. Gombrich, Symbolic Images, (1972).

“The whole prospect of Gaelic appals me, the more I think of the difficulties and the likelihood of its extinction in a generation or two. A … language with … no modern prose of any account, no philosophical or technical vocabulary to speak of, no correct usage except among old people and a few university students, colloquially full of gross English idiom lately taken over, exact shades of meanings of most words not to be found in any of its dictionaries and dialectally varying enormously (what chance of the appreciation of the overtones of poetry, except amongst a handful?) Above all, all economic, social and political factors working against it, and, with that, the notorious, moral cowardice of the Highlanders themselves.”

Sorley MacLean (1911–1996) Scottish poet

Sorley MacLean, June 1943, quoted in Krause, Corinna. "Translating Gaelic Scotland" https://pdfs.semanticscholar.org/beae/ab4c968782c1c0eeb7ee0f9459d009fab52d.pdf and "Gaelic Scotland – A Postcolonial Site?" https://www.gla.ac.uk/media/media_41178_en.pdf
Letters and interviews