Quotes about adjective (72 quotes) | Quotes of famous people

“When you catch an adjective, kill it. No, I don't mean utterly, but kill most of them--then the rest will be valuable. They weaken when they are close together. They give strength when they are far apart.”

Mark Twain (1835–1910) American author and humorist

“the blend of absurd, surreal and mundane which gave rise to the adjective "kafkaesque”

Franz Kafka book The Metamorphosis

Source: The Metamorphosis

“As to the adjective: when in doubt, strike it out.”

Mark Twain book Pudd'nhead Wilson

Source: Pudd'nhead Wilson

“What I have in mind is that art may be bad, good or indifferent, but, whatever adjective is used, we must call it art, and bad art is still art in the same way that a bad emotion is still an emotion.”

Marcel Duchamp (1887–1968) French painter and sculptor

1951 - 1968, The Creative Act', 1957
Context: I want to clarify our understanding of the word 'art' – to be sure, without an attempt to a definition. What I have in mind is that art may be bad, good or indifferent, but, whatever adjective is used, we must call it art, and bad art is still art in the same way as a bad emotion is still an emotion.
Therefore, when I refer to 'art coefficient', it will be understood that I refer not only to great art, but I am trying to describe the subjective mechanism which produces art in a raw state – 'à l'état brute' – bad, good or indifferent.

Art , Way , Indifference

“I would have girls regard themselves not as adjectives but as nouns.”

Elizabeth Cady Stanton (1815–1902) Suffragist and Women's Rights activist

Girl

“A man's character may be learned from the adjectives which he habitually uses in conversation.”

Mark Twain (1835–1910) American author and humorist

Learning

“In Asia or the Arab world or in Africa, where the Muslims are, if you find one who says he's white, all he's doing is using an adjective to describe something that is incidental about him…. There is nothing else to it. He's just white. But when you get the white man over here in America and he says he's white, he means something else. You can listen to the sound of his voice when he says he's white. He means he's boss.”

Malcolm X (1925–1965) American human rights activist

Source: Malcolm X Speaks (1965), p. 163

World

“If I have to use an adjective to define myself, then I might use ‘cute’ but I don’t think I’m sexy. If people think that I’m sexy, then I’m happy.”

Drashti Dhami (1985) Indian television actress and model

Adjective to define herself http://m.hindustantimes.com/tv/drashti-dhami-is-open-to-reality-shows-but-not-interested-in-bigg-boss/story-prlzmiCOca54M2jMwkchgM.html

People , Thinking , Happiness

“The so-called pejorative tendency has yet another cause. It is in the nature of human malice to take pleasure in looking for a vice or a fault behind a quality. The French have the adjective prude, which had formerly a good and noble acceptation, since it is the feminine of preux. But the spirit of the narrators (perhaps also some feeling of rancour against the loftier virtues) turned this adjective aside towards the equivocal sense that it now bears. Words which refer to the relations of the sexes are especially exposed to changes of this kind. We remember what a noble signification amant and mattress still possessed in Corneille. But they are dethroned, as was Buhle in German. Here we see the inevitable results of a false delicacy; honourable names are dishonoured by being given to things which are dishonourable.”

Michel Bréal (1832–1915) French philologist

Source: Essai de semantique, 1897, p. 101; parly cited in: Geoffrey Hughes (2011). Political Correctness: A History of Semantics and Culture. p. 11

Pleasure , Sex , Feeling , Nature

“The adjective is the enemy of the substantive.”

Voltaire (1694–1778) French writer, historian, and philosopher

Attributed

“To be depressed or neurotic is passive. It happened to us; we are its victim, and we have no control over it. This use of nouns and adjectives makes it logical for us to believe that we can do nothing for ourselves…but you are capable of choosing something better. If it is a choice, it follows that you are responsible for making it. With verbs, you are not a victim of mental illness; you are either the beneficiary of your own good choices or the victim of your own bad choices. You are not ill in the usual sense of having the flu or food poisoning. A choice theory world is a tough responsible world; you cannot use grammar to escape responsibility for what you are doing.”

William Glasser (1925–2013) American psychiatrist

Source: Choice Theory (1997), p. 75

World , Food , Sense

“But the adjectives change,” said Jimmy. “Nothing’s worse than last year’s adjectives.”

Margaret Atwood book Oryx and Crake

Source: Oryx and Crake

Change

“When a girl uses six derogatory adjectives in her attempt to paint the portrait of the loved one, it means something. One may indicate a merely temporary tiff. Six is big stuff.”

P.G. Wodehouse (1881–1975) English author

Source: Jeeves in the Morning

Love , Girl , Painting

“I've got an adjective that just fits you.”

F. Scott Fitzgerald (1896–1940) American novelist and screenwriter

“Once she read a book but found it distasteful because it contained adjectives.”

Lois Lowry (1937) American writer

Source: The Willoughbys

Books , Reading

“The consumer isn't a moron; she is your wife. You insult her intelligence if you assume that a mere slogan and a few vapid adjectives will persuade her to buy anything. She wants all the information you can give her.”

David Ogilvy book Confessions of an Advertising Man

Source: Confessions of an Advertising Man, p. 96 (Ballantine Books)

Intelligence

“I was horribly bookish, to the point of coming right out and saying it, which I knew was not socially acceptable. I particularly loved the adjective bookish, which I found other people used about as often as ramrod or chum or teetotaler.”

David Levithan (1972) American author and editor

Source: Dash & Lily's Book of Dares

Love , People

“Atticus told me to delete the adjectives and I'd have the facts.”

Harper Lee book To Kill a Mockingbird

Source: To Kill a Mockingbird

“Death to all modifiers, he declared one day, and out of every letter that passed through his hands went every adverb and every adjective.”

Joseph Heller book Catch-22

Source: Catch-22

Death

“People label themselves with all sorts of adjectives. I can only pronounce myself as 'nauseatingly miserable beyond repair'.”

Franz Kafka (1883–1924) author

Source: Diaries of Franz Kafka

People

“When I was hired they showed me my desk, an old beat-up scarred wooden desk, and they told me that it had been O. Henry’s desk when O. Henry worked for the paper, as he had at one time. And I readily believed it. I could see the place where O. Henry had savagely stabbed the desk with his pen in pursuit of a slimy adjective just out of reach, and a kind of bashed-in-looking place where O. Henry had beaten his poor genius head on the desk in frustration over not being able to capture the noun leaping like a fawn just out of reach… So I sat down at the desk and I too began to chase those devils, the dancy nouns and come-hither adjectives, what joy.”

Donald Barthelme (1931–1989) American writer, editor, and professor

“Return”, p. 55.
The Teachings of Don. B: Satires, Parodies, Fables, Illustrated Stories, and Plays of Donald Barthelme (1992)

Time , Joy

“Hitler did not have Mussolini's revolutionary socialist background… Nevertheless, he shared the socialist hatred and contempt for the 'bourgeoisie' and 'capitalism' and exploited for his purposes the powerful socialist traditions of Germany. The adjectives 'socialist' and 'worker' in the official name of Hitler's party ('The Nationalist-Socialist German Workers' Party') had not merely propagandistic value… On one occasion, in the midst of World War II, Hitler even declared that 'basically National Socialism and Marxism are the same.”

Richard Pipes (1923–2018) American historian

Source: Property and Freedom (1999), p. 220

War , World

“The default designation of poetry has become written poetry. That's why we have to prefix the adjective "oral," because the unmodified noun no longer covers anything but written poetry. That's also why we resort to other unwieldy phrases to pigeonhole events and phenomena that our cultural proclivities have silently eliminated from consideration. Thus a "poetry reading" describes a performance (from a published text, of course) before a well-behaved, often academic audience. Thus "spoken-word poetry"—so redundant from a historical perspective—identifies voiced verbal art, verse that is lifted off the page and into the world of presence and experience.”

John Miles Foley (1947–2012) American literary scholar

How to Read an Oral Poem (2002), p. 30

World , Art , Reading

“"Wuthering" being a significant provincial adjective, descriptive of the atmospheric tumult to which its station is exposed in stormy weather. Pure, bracing ventilation they must have up there at all times, indeed: one may guess the power of the north wind blowing over the edge, by the excessive slant of a few stunted firs at the end of the house; and by a range of gaunt thorns all stretching their limbs one way, as if craving alms of the sun.”

Emily Brontë book Wuthering Heights

Mr. Lockwood (Ch. I).
Wuthering Heights (1847)

Way , Time , Sun , Housing

“Whether we are writing prose or verse we must never use language in a merely decorative way, every qualifying word, every adjective and adverb must be carefully inspected & weighed before it is used and ask before its use, is it really necessary.”

Vernon Scannell (1922–2007) British boxer and poet

A Proper Gentleman, 1977

Way

“As Amish say "There is a vast difference between putting your nose in other people's business and putting your heart in other people's problems,” and there is also a vast difference between using the ‘grammar of language’ and the ‘grammar of painting’. In a language we have subjects, adjectives, verbs, and so on, and in painting we have light, composition, geometric planes, and lines. It is by using this grammar that one can understand a work of art. This is very similar to Ferdinand Saussure’s, distinction between “la langue” and “la parole” for interpretation of written words.”

Guity Novin (1944) artist

Dialogues on enlightenment and reason (2013)

People , Art , Understanding , Business

“We live in an age which eschews sentimentality as if it were a good deal more than the devil. (Actually, of course, a writer may be just as sentimental in laying undue emphasis on sexual crimes as on dying mothers: sentimental, like scientific, is an adjective that relates to method, not to matter.)”

Randall Jarrell (1914–1965) poet, critic, novelist, essayist

"Ten Books," The Southern Review (Autumn 1935) [p. 8]
Kipling, Auden & Co: Essays and Reviews 1935-1964 (1980)

Age

“Actually, there is no such thing as a homosexual person, any more than there is such a thing as a heterosexual person. The words are adjectives describing sexual acts, not people. The sexual acts are entirely normal; if they were not, no one would perform them.”

Gore Vidal (1925–2012) American writer

"Sex Is Politics" (1979)
1980s, The Second American Revolution (1983)

People , Personality

“The sixth grade seemed to please him from the beginning: he went through a brief Egyptian Period that baffled me — he tried to walk flat a great deal, sticking one arm in front of him and one in back of him, putting one foot behind the other. He declared Egyptians walked that way; I said if they did I didn't see how they got anything done, but Jem said they accomplished more than the Americans ever did, they invented toilet paper and perpetual embalming, and asked where would we be today if they hadn't? Atticus told me to delete the adjectives and I'd have the facts.”

Harper Lee book To Kill a Mockingbird

Pt. 1, ch. 7
Jean Louise (Scout) Finch
To Kill a Mockingbird (1962)

Way

“The third factor inhibiting inquiries into the influence of Bolshevism on Fascism and National Socialism was the insistence of Moscow on banishing from the vocabulary of ‘progressive’ thought the adjective ‘totalitarian’ in favor of ‘Fascist’ to describe all anti-Communist movements and regimes.”

Richard Pipes (1923–2018) American historian

Source: Russia Under The Bolshevik Regime (1994), p. 242

“Any number of definitions help to determine who we are. It doesn't hurt to be a woman writer, an American woman writer, American woman writer of the 21st century. I think all these descriptions of us — and they're descriptions and adjectives that pertain to you — none of them diminish you, really. I think that maybe there's a kind of deepening or expansion the more identifications you have.”

Joyce Carol Oates (1938) American author

Tavis Smiley interview (2005)

Thinking , Help , Hurt

“I don't like your I-can-use-anything-as-an-adjective attitude.”

Larry Wall (1954) American computer programmer and author, creator of Perl

[1994Nov12.013919.21133@netlabs.com, 1994]
Usenet postings, 1994

“Good is a noun rather than an adjective.”

Robert M. Pirsig book Lila: An Inquiry into Morals

Lila (1991)

“Let every man honor and love the land of his birth and the race from which he springs and keep their memory green. It is a pious and honorable duty. But let us have done with British-Americans and Irish-Americans and German-Americans, and so on, and all be Americans…If a man is going to be an American at all let him be so without any qualifying adjectives; and if he is going to be something else, let him drop the word American from his personal description.”

Henry Cabot Lodge (1850–1924) American statesman

The Day We Celebrate (Forefathers' Day), Address, New England Society of Brooklyn (December 21, 1888).

Love , Spring , Birth , Memory

“The sublime title "Christ" is an adjective which only receives its specific value from the specificity of the noun, Jesus of Nazareth. If Jesus is forgotten, then it becomes possible to fill the adjective with whatever suits at the time, without checking whether Jesus was like that or not, or whether this means leaving the world sunk in its wretchedness or not; or worse still, without asking if this image legitimates the tragedy of the world or brings liberation from it.”

Jon Sobrino (1938) Spanish theologian

Source: Jesus the Liberator (1991), p. 15

World , Time , Christ

“With a few exceptions, Fellini's films have failure and despair running through them: Life continues, but I can't imagine 'Felliniesque' as an exclusively uplifting adjective. Fellini's best films are the ones that distill this essence -- the paradoxical quality of melancholic ecstasy, a surreal, bittersweet vitality -- to perfection.”

Damian Pettigrew Canadian filmmaker

On the adjective ‘Felliniesque’, in The Los Angeles Times (April 2003)]

Life , Imagination , Failure , Perfection

“Be content —
Expansions, diffusions — content to be
The unspotted imbecile revery,
The heraldic center of the world
Of blue, blue sleek with a hundred chins,
The amorist Adjective aflame…”

Wallace Stevens (1879–1955) American poet

The Man With the Blue Guitar (1937)

World

“The – now shop-worn – label of ‘magical realism’ is customarily applied to Márquez’s novels. It has never fitted Vargas Llosa, who disavows the adjective.”

Perry Anderson (1938) British historian

Spectrum: From Right to Left in the World of Ideas (2005), Ch 10. "Tropical Recall, Gabriel García Márquez" (2005)

“Now, maybe you thought you could get clever by adding an "-ing" to your favorite curse word. Well, the bill also prohibits "compound use, including hyphenated compounds … and other grammatical forms including verb, adjective, gerund, participle, and infinitive forms." Fortunately for me, they didn't include the pluperfect subjunctive. So all you stuffed shirts can just have been having had to bite me.”

Lewis Black (1948) American stand-up comedian, author, playwright, social critic and actor

The Daily Show (2004-3-24), "Back in Black," regarding H.R. 3687 http://www.govtrack.us/congress/bill.xpd?bill=h108-3687, intended to expand the definition of "profane broadcasts."

“Chiefly responsible for the bad name of anarchism are the supporters of political power, but anarchists too have contributed by being vague and perfunctory concerning the social side of their doctrine and by frequently espousing the cause of rebellion without insisting on its social illumination. Antisocial impulses and practices may only too easily find in anarchism a pseudo-rational justification. For these reasons the adjective "social" is a useful addition to the word "anarchism"—in order to be truly anarchist one has to be social.”

Giovanni Baldelli (1914–1986) Anarchist theorist

Source: Social Anarchism (1971), p. 6

Support

“Now I hold that necessity merits more amiable adjectives;--what a great deal of trouble is saved thereby. To an undecided person like myself, the inevitable is invaluable.”

Letitia Elizabeth Landon (1802–1838) English poet and novelist

The Monthly Magazine

Personality

“When reading, writing and translating, it is important to have a way of keeping track of what you have absorbed and learned, so that you can build on it and acquire richer resources for the future. When reading, read actively and critically. Jot down interesting expressions, forceful adjectives, little turns of phrase, that strike you as effective, as things you might one day be able to use yourself—in both languages.”

John Minford (1946) New Zealand sinologist

Public Lecture (2018)

Way , Learning , Reading , Future

“Jeff Gannon: In your denunciations of the Abu Ghraib photos, you've used words like "sickening," "disgusting" and "reprehensible." Will you have any adjectives left to adequately describe the pictures from Saddam's rape rooms and torture chambers? And will Americans ever see those images?
Scott McClellan: I'm glad you brought that up, Jeff, because the President talks about that often.”

Scott McClellan (1968) Former White House press secretary

Source: Press briefing http://georgewbush-whitehouse.archives.gov/news/releases/2004/05/20040510-14.html, May 10, 2004

Photo

“The word model is used as a noun, adjective, and verb, and in each instance it has a slightly different connotation. As a noun "model" is a representation in the sense in which an architect constructs a small-scale model of a building or a physicist a large-scale model of an atom. As an adjective "model" implies a degree or perfection or idealization, as in reference to a model home, a model student, or a model husband. As a verb "to model" means to demonstrate, to reveal, to show what a thing is like.”

Russell L. Ackoff (1919–2009) Scientist

Source: 1960s, Scientific method: optimizing applied research decisions, 1962, p. 108 as cited in: Charles West Churchman, Richard O. Mason (1976) World modeling: a dialogue. p. 23.

Home , Sense , Perfection

“One-day cricket has debased the currency, both of great finishes and of adjectives to describe them.”

Matthew Engel (1951) English writer and editor

The Guardian Book of Cricket (1986)

“The very natural tendency to use terms derived from traditional grammar like verb, noun, adjective, passive voice, in describing languages outside of Indo-European is fraught with grave possibilities of misunderstanding.”

Benjamin Lee Whorf (1897–1941) American linguist

Whorf (1937) "Grammer categories" in: Language, (1945) Vol 21. p. 1-11.

Nature

“To speak today of a famous novelist is like speaking of a famous cabinetmaker or speedboat designer. Adjective is inappropriate to noun.”

Gore Vidal (1925–2012) American writer

Source: 1990s, Screening History (1992), Ch. 1: The Prince and the Pauper, pp.2-3

“Well, if I were thus rationed in this article and could have but one adjective for George Gershwin, that adjective would be "ingenuous." Ingenuous at and about his piano. Once an occasional composer named Oscar Levant stood beside that piano while those sure, sinewy, catlike Gershwin fingers beat their brilliant drum-fire—the tumultuous cascade of the "Rhapsody In Blue," the amorous languor of "The Man I Love," the impish glee of "Fascinating Rhythm," the fine, jaunty, dust-spurning scorn of "Strike Up the Band." If the performer was familiar with the work of any other composer, he gave no evidence of it. Levant (who, by the way, makes a fleeting appearance in the new Dashlell Hammett book, under the guise of Levi Oscant) could be heard mutterIng under his breath, "An evening with Gershwin Is a Gershwln evening."
"I wonder," said our young composer dreamily, "if my music will be played a hundred years from now."
"It certainly will be," said the bitter Levant,"if you are still around."”

Alexander Woollcott (1887–1943) American critic

"George the Ingenuous" in Cosmopolitan (November 1933); reprinted in Ch. IV: "'...A Young Colossus...'" https://books.google.com/books?id=ATcjgQTx0uIC&pg=PA45#v=onepage&q&f=false from Gershwin Remembered (1992) by Edward Jablonski, pp. 44-45

Love , Books , Music , Way

“Why do we call ourselves 'Imagists'. Well why not? Well I think it is a very good and descriptive title and it serves to enunciate some of the principles we mos firmly believe in… Direct treatment of the subject… as few adjectives as possible… a hardness, as of cut stone… individuality of rhythm…”

Richard Aldington (1892–1962) English writer and poet

Modern Poetry and the Imagists in the Egoist, London 1914

Thinking

“What language did these Macedones speak? The name itself is Greek in root and in ethnic termination. It probably means highlanders, and it is comparable to Greek tribal names such as `Orestai' and `Oreitai', meaning 'mountain-men'. A reputedly earlier variant, `Maketai', has the same root, which means `high', as in the Greek adjective makednos or the noun mekos. The genealogy of eponymous ancestors which Hesiod recorded […] has a bearing on the question of Greek speech. First, Hesiod made Macedon a brother of Magnes; as we know from inscriptions that the Magnetes spoke the Aeolic dialect of the Greek language, we have a predisposition to suppose that the Macedones spoke the Aeolic dialect. Secondly, Hesiod made Macedon and Magnes first cousins of Hellen's three sons - Dorus, Xouthus, and Aeolus-who were the founders of three dialects of Greek speech, namely Doric, Ionic, and Aeolic. Hesiod would not have recorded this relationship, unless he had believed, probably in the seventh century, that the Macedones were a Greek speaking people. The next evidence comes from Persia. At the turn of the sixth century the Persians described the tribute-paying peoples of their province in Europe, and one of them was the `yauna takabara', which meant `Greeks wearing the hat'. There were Greeks in Greek city-states here and there in the province, but they were of various origins and not distinguished by a common hat. However, the Macedonians wore a distinctive hat, the kausia. We conclude that the Persians believed the Macedonians to be speakers of Greek. Finally, in the latter part of the fifth century a Greek historian, Hellanicus, visited Macedonia and modified Hesiod's genealogy by making Macedon not a cousin, but a son of Aeolus, thus bringing Macedon and his descendants firmly into the Aeolic branch of the Greek-speaking family. Hesiod, Persia, and Hellanicus had no motive for making a false statement about the language of the Macedonians, who were then an obscure and not a powerful people. Their independent testimonies should be accepted as conclusive.”

N. G. L. Hammond (1907–2001) British classical scholar

"The Macedonian State" p.12-13)

Men , People , Family , Mountain

“It isn’t that I object to it. I just feel it’s the wrong adjective as applied to the films I do. Because horror to me is, say, a film like The Godfather. Or anything to do with war, which is real and can happen, and unfortunately, no doubt, will happen again some time. But the films that dear Christopher Lee and I do are really fantasy. And I think fantasy is a better adjective to use. I don’t object to the term horror, it’s just the wrong adjective!”

Peter Cushing (1913–1994) English actor

Peter Cushing Interview 1973 http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/p048plh0 (1973)

War , Feeling , Thinking , Time

“Any empirical evaluation of the relationship between Trump and the white working class would reveal that one adjective in that phrase is doing more work than the other. In 2016, Trump enjoyed majority or plurality support among every economic branch of whites. It is true that his strongest support among whites came from those making $50,000 to $99,999. This would be something more than working-class in many nonwhite neighborhoods, but even if one accepts that branch as the working class, the difference between how various groups in this income bracket voted is revealing. Sixty-one percent of whites in this "working class" supported Trump. Only 24 percent of Hispanics and 11 percent of blacks did. Indeed, the plurality of all voters making less than $100,000 and the majority making less than $50,000 voted for the Democratic candidate. So when Packer laments [in the New Yorker] the fact that "Democrats can no longer really claim to be the party of working people—not white ones, anyway," he commits a kind of category error. The real problem is that Democrats aren't the party of white people—working or otherwise. White workers are not divided by the fact of labor from other white demographics; they are divided from all other laborers by the fact of their whiteness.”

Ta-Nehisi Coates (1975) writer, journalist, and educator

"The First White President" (October 2017)

People , Error , Support , Problem

“Evans wanted his photographs to be "literate, authoritative, transcendent." The moral universe of the 1930s being no longer ours, these adjectives are barely creditable today. Nobody demands that photography be literate. Nobody can imagine how it could be authoritative. Nobody understands how anything, least of all a photograph, could be transcendent.”

Susan Sontag book On Photography

"America, Seen Through Photographs, Darkly", p. 31
On Photography (1977)

Imagination , Understanding , Universe

“Prudent readers will do well to hold Three Weeks at arm's length, unless they want to be cut by flying adjectives.”

Elinor Glyn (1864–1943) British novelist and scriptwriter

S. J. Perelman "Cloudland Revisited: Tuberoses and Tigers", in The Most of S. J. Perelman (London: Mandarin, [1979] 1992) p. 282.
Criticism

Flying

“To think straight, it is advisable to expect all qualities and attributes, adjectives, and so on to refer to at least two sets of interactions in time.”

Gregory Bateson (1904–1980) English anthropologist, social scientist, linguist, visual anthropologist, semiotician and cyberneticist

Source: Mind and Nature, a necessary unity, 1988, p. 68

Thinking , Time

“My notion about any artist is that we honor him best by reading him, by playing his music, by seeing his plays or by looking at his pictures. We don't need to fall all over ourselves with adjectives and epithets. Let's play him more.”

Jacques Barzun (1907–2012) Historian

Interview with John C. Tibbetts http://www.murphywong.net/barzuncentennial/JohnCTibbetts.htm (1986-12-04)

Music , Reading

“Frankly I've never really subscribed to these adjectives tagging me as an 'icon', 'superstar', etc. I've always thought of myself as an actor doing his job to the best of his ability.”

Amitabh Bachchan (1942) Indian actor

Quotable quotes by Amitabh Bachchan.

“If we look at the parpens piled up on the building site or at the block of bronze, nothing about them manifests that they are suited to being a house or a statue. … Aristotle speaks of the materials considered as such in terms of "the buildable" (I, 201a 16, b Bf), coining an adjective whose suffix expresses capacity (what he calls dunamis). This capacity, as we have seen, cannot be grasped after the manner of that with which perception provides us (color, hardness, etc.); it requires a gaze capable of probing more deeply, of proceeding from the real to the possible—as when Michelangelo "sees" a David in the formless block abandoned by other sculptors.”

Rémi Brague (1947) French historian

"Aristotle's Definition of Motion and its Ontological Implications," Graduate Faculty Philosophy Journal, vol. 13, no. 2, p. 12

Color , Housing

“We've use a number of different adjectives to describe Span, but "cool" has never been one of them.”

Paul DiLascia (1959–2008) American software developer

1994/12
Misc

“John Tate and I were asked by Nature magazine to write an obituary for Alexander Grothendieck. Now he is a hero of mine, the person that I met most deserving of the adjective "genius". I got to know him when he visited Harvard and John, Shurik (as he was known) and I ran a seminar on "s". His devotion to math, his disdain for formality and convention, his openness and what John and others call his naiveté struck a chord with me.”

David Mumford (1937) American mathematician

David Mumford. " Can one explain schemes to biologists http://www.dam.brown.edu/people/mumford/blog/2014/Grothendieck.html," at dam.brown.edu/people/mumford/blog, December 14, 2014.

Nature , Personality

“Liberals, unless they are professional politicians seeking votes in the hinterland, are not subject to strong feelings of national patriotism and are likely to feel uneasy at patriotic ceremonies. These, like the organizations in whose conduct they are still manifest, are dismissed by liberals rather scornfully as ‘flag-waving’ and ‘100 percent Americanism.’ The national anthem is not customarily sung or the flag shown, unless prescribed by law, at meetings of liberal associations. When a liberal journalist uses the phrase ‘patriotic organization,’ the adjective is equivalent in meaning to ‘stupid, reactionary and rather ludicrous.’ The rise of liberalism to predominance in the controlling sectors of American opinion is in almost exact correlation with the decline in the ceremonial celebration of the Fourth of July, traditionally regarded as the nation’s major holiday. To the liberal mind, the patriotic oratory is not only banal but subversive of rational ideals; and judged by liberalism’s humanitarian morality, the enthusiasm and pleasures that simple souls might have got from the fireworks could not compensate the occasional damage to the eye or finger of an unwary youngster. The purer liberals of the Norman Cousins strain, in the tradition of Eleanor Roosevelt, are more likely to celebrate UN day than the Fourth of July.”

James Burnham (1905–1987) American philosopher

James Burnham (1961) Suicide of the West; as cited in: Suicide of the West http://nlt.ashbrook.org/2006/03/suicide-of-the-west.php Posted by Steven Hayward on ashbrook.org 2006/03; And in 2012 on powerlineblog.com http://www.powerlineblog.com/archives/2012/01/suicide-of-the-west.php

Pleasure , Stupidity , Law , Feeling

“Last week, Mr President, I seemed to hear a strange sound emanating from Blackpool. And I thought at first it was seagulls. [laughter] Then I remembered that Labour was holding its annual Conference there. And I realised it wasn't seagulls, it was chickens—[laughter and applause] chickens being counted before they were hatched—[laughter and applause] except for Labour's call to enter the ERM and cut interest rates. That was a case of counting chickens after they'd flown the coop. Then, I heard voices getting all worked up about someone they kept calling the “Prime Minister in Waiting”. [laughter] It occurs to me, Mr President, that he might have quite a wait. [applause] I can see him now, like the people queuing up for the Winter sales. All got up with his camp bed, hot thermos, woolly balaclava, CND badge… [laughter and applause] Waiting, waiting, waiting… And then when the doors open, in he rushes—only to find that, as always, there's “that woman” ahead of him again. [applause and laughter] I gather there may be an adjective between “that” and “woman” [laughter] only no-one will tell me what it is. [laughter and applause]”

Margaret Thatcher (1925–2013) British stateswoman and politician

Speech to Conservative Party Conference (12 October 1990) http://www.margaretthatcher.org/document/108217
Third term as Prime Minister

People , Laughter , Winter , Waiting

“Here is how [life] happens. We find something we want to do, if we are lucky, or something we need to do, if we are like most people. We use it as a way to obtain food, shelter, clothing, mates, comfort, a first folio of Shakespeare, model airplanes, American Girl dolls, a handful of rice, sex, solitude, a trip to Venice, Nikes, drinking water, plastic surgery, child care, dogs, medicine, education, cars, spiritual solace -- whatever we think we need. To do this, we enact the role we call "me," trying to brand ourselves as a person who can and should obtain these things.In the process, we place the people in our lives into compartments and define how they should behave to our advantage. Because we cannot force them to follow our desires, we deal with projections of them created in our minds. But they will be contrary and have wills of their own. Eventually new projections of us are dealing with new projections of them. Sometimes versions of ourselves disagree. We succumb to temptation — but, oh, father, what else was I gonna do? I feel like hell. I repent. I'll do it again… This has not been a conventional review. There is no need to name the characters, name the actors, assign adjectives to their acting. Look at who is in this cast. You know what I think of them. This film must not have seemed strange to them. It's what they do all day, especially waiting around for the director to make up his mind.”

Roger Ebert (1942–2013) American film critic, author, journalist, and TV presenter

Review http://www.rogerebert.com/reviews/synecdoche-new-york-2008 of Synecdoche, New York (5 November 2008)
Reviews, Four star reviews

Life , People , Education , Food

“Let us begin by observing that the word "system" is almost never used by itself; it is generally accompanied by an adjective or other modifier: physical system; biological system; social system; economic system; axiom system; religious system; and even "general" system. This usage suggests that, when confronted by a system of any kind, certain of its properties are to be subsumed under the adjective, and other properties are subsumed under the "system," while still others may depend essentially on both. The adjective describes what is special or particular; i. e., it refers to the specific "thinghood" of the system; the "system" describes those properties which are independent of this specific "thinghood."
This observation immediately suggests a close parallel between the concept of a system and the development of the mathematical concept of a set. Given any specific aggregate of things; e. g., five oranges, three sticks, five fingers, there are some properties of the aggregate which depend on the specific nature of the things of which the aggregate is composed. There are others which are totally independent of this and depend only on the "set-ness" of the aggregate. The most prominent of these is what we can call the cardinality of the aggregate…
It should now be clear that system hood is related to thinghood in much the same way as set-ness is related to thinghood. Likewise, what we generally call system properties are related to systemhood in the same way as cardinality is related to set-ness. But systemhood is different from both set-ness and from thinghood; it is an independent category.”

Robert Rosen (1934–1998) American theoretical biologist

Source: "Some comments on systems and system theory," (1986), p. 1-2 as quoted in George Klir (2001) Facets of Systems Science, p. 4

Way , Mathematics , Nature , Dependency

“The adjective “political” in “political philosophy” designates not so much the subject matter as a manner of treatment; from this point of view, I say, “political philosophy” means primarily not the philosophic study of politics, but the political, or popular, treatment of philosophy, or the political introduction to philosophy—the attempt to lead qualified citizens, or rather their qualified sons, from the political life to the philosophic life.”

Leo Strauss (1899–1973) Classical philosophy specialist and father of neoconservativism

Source: What is Political Philosophy (1959), p. 93

Life , Study

“Don’t tell me you are a moderate. Moderate is an adjective. It is a qualifier. You may be a moderate conservative, a moderate democrat, or a moderate drinker but it doesn’t tell me what you believe in. It’s not a philosophy. Unless all you believe in is moderation for the sake of moderation. Grow up! You can’t be a good egg all of your life. Someday you have to either hatch or rot.”

Mike Rosen (1944) American political pundit

REALITY A Plain-Talk Guide to Economics, Politics, Government and Culture

Life

“The emergence of a new term to describe a certain phenomenon, of a new adjective to designate a certain quality, is always of interest, both linguistically and from the point of view of the history of human thought.”

Logan Pearsall Smith (1865–1946) British American-born writer

"Four Romantic Words" http://www.solcon.nl/arendsmilde/cslewis/reflections/e-frw-text.htm in Words and Idioms : Studies in the English Language (1925), § I.
Context: The emergence of a new term to describe a certain phenomenon, of a new adjective to designate a certain quality, is always of interest, both linguistically and from the point of view of the history of human thought. That history would be a much simpler matter (and language, too, a much more precise instrument) if new thoughts on their appearance, and new facts at their discovery, could at once be analysed and explained and named with scientific precision. But even in science this seldom happens; we find rather that a whole complex group of facts, like those for instance of gas or electricity, are at first somewhat vaguely noticed, and are given, more or less by chance, a name like that of gas, which is an arbitrary formation, or that of electricity, which is derived from the attractive power of electrum or amber when rubbed — the first electric phenomenon to be noticed.

History

“God is the supreme noun of life; He's not an adjective. He is the supreme subject of life; He's not a verb. He's the supreme independent clause; He's not a dependent clause. Everything else is dependent on Him, but He is dependent on nothing.”

Martin Luther King, Jr. (1929–1968) American clergyman, activist, and leader in the American Civil Rights Movement

1960s, Why Jesus Called A Man A Fool (1967)
Context: This man was a fool because he failed to realize his dependence on God... this man-centered foolishness is still alive today. In fact, it has gotten to the point today that some are even saying that God is dead. The thing that bothers me about it is that they didn't give me full information, because at least I would have wanted to attend God's funeral. And today I want to ask, who was the coroner that pronounced Him dead? I want to raise a question, how long had He been sick? I want to know whether He had a heart attack or died of chronic cancer. These questions haven't been answered for me, and I'm going on believing and knowing that God is alive. You see, as long as love is around, God is alive. As long as justice is around, God is alive. There are certain conceptions of God that needed to die, but not God. You see, God is the supreme noun of life; He's not an adjective. He is the supreme subject of life; He's not a verb. He's the supreme independent clause; He's not a dependent clause. Everything else is dependent on Him, but He is dependent on nothing.

Life , God , Dependency

“A current pejorative adjective is narcissistic. Generally, a narcissist is anyone better looking than you are, but lately the adjective is often applied to those “liberals” who prefer to improve the lives of others rather than exploit them.”

Gore Vidal (1925–2012) American writer

"Growing Up With Gore Vidal," Screening History (1994), p. 24.
1990s
Context: A current pejorative adjective is narcissistic. Generally, a narcissist is anyone better looking than you are, but lately the adjective is often applied to those “liberals” who prefer to improve the lives of others rather than exploit them. Apparently, a concern for others is self-love at its least attractive, while greed is now a sign of the highest altruism. But then to reverse, periodically, the meanings of words is a very small price to pay for our vast freedom not only to conform but to consume.

“It isn’t that I object to it. I just feel it’s the wrong adjective as applied to the films I do. Because horror to me is, say, a film like The Godfather.”

Peter Cushing (1913–1994) English actor

Or anything to do with war, which is real and can happen, and unfortunately, no doubt, will happen again some time. But the films that dear Christopher Lee and I do are really fantasy. And I think fantasy is a better adjective to use. I don’t object to the term horror, it’s just the wrong adjective!
Peter Cushing Interview 1973 http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/p048plh0 (1973)

Feeling

“How do I describe the Rajinikanth I know? I would say he is, at the bottom of it all, human. That is the best adjective I have. It is this quality of humanness that stands out. He acts in front of the camera… never behind it. In the sense, he is a natural, unaffected person in real life. He is open, frank, very forthright, very loyal to his friends and family. A great human being.”

Rajinikanth (1950) Indian actor

Rajini acts in front of the camera, never behind it' (22 December 1999)

Family , Personality , Nature , Sense

“[The 3 adjectives to define your sound?] Cheerful, exciting and overwhelming.”

Prevale (1983) Italian DJ and producer

From the interview «Carlo Prevale: il DJ che trasmette emozioni con le sue canzoni!» http://www.prevale.net/news-and-releases.html, Corriereinformazione.it
Original: (it) [I 3 aggettivi per definire il tuo sound?] Allegro, emozionante e travolgente.
Source: From the interview by Federico Valenti, «Carlo Prevale: il DJ che trasmette emozioni con le sue canzoni!», Corriereinformazione.it, August 22, 2010; on Prevale.net http://www.prevale.net/news-and-releases.html.