The Humanist interview (2012)
Context: I think most social justice movements take the words that are used against them and make them good words. That’s partly how “black” came back into usage. Before we said “colored person,” or “Negro.” Then came “Black Power,” “Black Pride,” and “Black Is Beautiful” to make it a good word.
"Witch" was another word I remember reclaiming in the 1970s. There was a group called Women’s International Terrorist Conspiracy from Hell (WITCH). They all went down to Wall Street and hexed it. And Wall Street fell five points the next day; it was quite amazing! “Queer” and “gay” are other examples. … I think we all have the power to name ourselves. I try to call people what it is they wish to be called. But we can take the sting out of epithets and bad words by using them. Actually, I had done that earlier with “slut” because when I went back to Toledo, Ohio, which is where I was in high school and junior high school, I was on a radio show with a bunch of women. A man called up and called me “a slut from East Toledo,” which is doubly insulting because East Toledo is the wrong side of town. I thought, when I’d lived here I would have been devastated by this. But by this time I thought, you know, that’s a pretty good thing to be. I’m putting it on my tombstone: "Here lies the slut from East Toledo."
Source: "Jesus Christ and the Movement for Social Justice" (1911), p. 19
“So they come up against weird words, and the weird words excite them.”
Salon interview (1996)
Context: It’s fun to read things when you don't know all the words. Even children love it. One of the things any great children’s writer will tell you is that children like it if in books designed for their age group there is a vocabulary just slightly bigger than theirs. So they come up against weird words, and the weird words excite them. If you describe a small girl in a story as “loquacious,” it works so much better than “talkative.” And then some little girl will read the book and her sister will be shooting her mouth off and she will say to her sister, “Don't be so loquacious.” It is a whole new weapon in her arsenal.
The Glenn Beck Program
Premiere Radio Networks
2010-03-02
Goodstein
Laurie
Outraged by Glenn Beck’s Salvo, Christians Fire Back
New York Times
2010-03-11
0362-4331
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/03/12/us/12justice.html
2010s, 2010
Source: The Book Thief
C-SPAN: Romancing Opiates https://www.c-span.org/video/?191384-1/romancing-opiates (May 30, 2006)
"Night Words," Encounter (October 1965).
Language and Silence: Essays 1958-1966 (1967)
Committee on Energy of Commerce Hearing: Gasoline: Supply, Price, and Specifications https://house.resource.org/109/org.c-span.192444-1.pdf, May 10, 2006
to Representative Anna Eshoo, on her citing ExxonMobil officials saying they don't want to build any new refineries in North America
"Politics and the English Language" (1946)
Context: The word Fascism has now no meaning except in so far as it signifies "something not desirable". The words democracy, socialism, freedom, patriotic, realistic, justice have each of them several different meanings which cannot be reconciled with one another. In the case of a word like democracy, not only is there no agreed definition, but the attempt to make one is resisted from all sides. It is almost universally felt that when we call a country democratic we are praising it: consequently the defenders of every kind of regime claim that it is a democracy, and fear that they might have to stop using that word if it were tied down to any one meaning. Words of this kind are often used in a consciously dishonest way. That is, the person who uses them has his own private definition, but allows his hearer to think he means something quite different. Statements like Marshal Petain was a true patriot, The Soviet press is the freest in the world, The Catholic Church is opposed to persecution, are almost always made with intent to deceive. Other words used in variable meanings, in most cases more or less dishonestly, are: class, totalitarian, science, progressive, reactionary, bourgeois, equality.
On being informed that Faulkner had said that Hemingway "had never been known to use a word that might send the reader to the dictionary." Pt. 1, Ch. 4
Papa Hemingway (1966)
Fortescue, J., Button v. Heyward (1722), 8 Mod. 24. This is in reference perhaps to Baker v. Pearce, 6 Mod. 23.
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