“We need to get out of the old language.”
2000-09, Truth to Power, 2009
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Ai Weiwei 218
Chinese concept artist 1957Related quotes

Psychedelic Society (1984)
Context: Our ability to destroy ourselves is the mirror image of our ability to save ourselves, and what is lacking is the clear vision of what should be done... What needs to be done is that fundamental, ontological conceptions of reality need to be redone. We need a new language, and to have a new language we must have a new reality... A new reality will generate a new language, a new language will fix a new reality, and make it part of this reality.

Environmentalism as a Religion (2003)

“Within C++, there is a much smaller and cleaner language struggling to get out.”
[Stroustrup, Bjarne, The Design and Evolution of C++, 207]. A later clarification adds, "And no, that smaller and cleaner language is not Java or C#." Bjarne Stroustrup's FAQ: Did you really say that?, 2007-11-15 http://www.stroustrup.com/bs_faq.html#really-say-that,

I'm 32 - Well you look 78!
Podcast Series 3 Episode 4
On Ageing

Nobel Prize acceptance speech (1962)
Context: Literature was not promulgated by a pale and emasculated critical priesthood singing their litanies in empty churches — nor is it a game for the cloistered elect, the tinhorn mendicants of low calorie despair.
Literature is as old as speech. It grew out of human need for it, and it has not changed except to become more needed.
The skalds, the bards, the writers are not separate and exclusive. From the beginning, their functions, their duties, their responsibilities have been decreed by our species.

When You Ride Alone You Ride with Bin Laden: What the Government Should Be Telling Us to Help Fight the War on Terrorism (2002)

“To defend what we love we need a particularizing language, for we love what we particularly know.”
Life Is A Miracle : An Essay Against Modern Superstition (2000)
Context: We know enough of our own history by now to be aware that people exploit what they have merely concluded to be of value, but they defend what they love. To defend what we love we need a particularizing language, for we love what we particularly know.