“If you care about being thought credible and intelligent, do not use complex language where simpler language will do.”

Source: Thinking, Fast and Slow

Last update Jan. 2, 2024. History

Help us to complete the source, original and additional information

Do you have more details about the quote "If you care about being thought credible and intelligent, do not use complex language where simpler language will do." by Daniel Kahneman?
Daniel Kahneman photo
Daniel Kahneman 51
Israeli-American psychologist 1934

Related quotes

Jane Roberts photo

“Telepathy accounts for the usefulness of spoken language. Without telepathy no language would be intelligible.”

Jane Roberts (1929–1984) American Writer

Session 57, Page 119
The Early Sessions: Sessions 1-42, 1997, The Early Sessions: Book 2

Alice Sebold photo
C. A. R. Hoare photo
Caterina Davinio photo
Salman Rushdie photo
John Ronald Reuel Tolkien photo

“I wish life was not so short," he thought. "Languages take such a time, and so do all the things one wants to know about.”

John Ronald Reuel Tolkien (1892–1973) British philologist and author, creator of classic fantasy works

"Alboin Errol", in The Lost Road (1987). Compare this with "The lyf so short, the craft so longe to lerne" by Geoffrey Chaucer

Eugéne Ionesco photo

“There were no longer words being spoken, but images being visualized. We achieved it above all by the dislocation of language. … Beckett destroys language with silence. I do it with too much language, with characters talking at random, and by inventing words.”

Eugéne Ionesco (1909–1994) Romanian playwright

The Paris Review interview (1984)
Context: Beckett shows death; his people are in dustbins or waiting for God. (Beckett will be cross with me for mentioning God, but never mind.) Similarly, in my play The New Tenant, there is no speech, or rather, the speeches are given to the Janitor. The Tenant just suffocates beneath proliferating furniture and objects — which is a symbol of death. There were no longer words being spoken, but images being visualized. We achieved it above all by the dislocation of language. … Beckett destroys language with silence. I do it with too much language, with characters talking at random, and by inventing words.

Edsger W. Dijkstra photo

“About the use of language: it is impossible to sharpen a pencil with a blunt axe. It is equally vain to try to do it with ten blunt axes instead.”

Edsger W. Dijkstra (1930–2002) Dutch computer scientist

1970s, How do we tell truths that might hurt? (1975)

Related topics