Quotes about word (9377 quotes, page 64)

“No statistician present at this moment will have been in doubt about the meaning of my words when I mentioned the common statistical model. It must be a stochastic device producing random results. Tossing coins or a dice or playing at cards are not flexible enough. The most general chance instrument is the urn filled with balls of different colours or with tickets bearing some ciphers or letters. This model is continuously used in our courses as a didactic tool, and in our statistical analyses as a means of translating realistic problems into mathematical ones. In statistical language " urn model " is a standard expression.”

Hans Freudenthal (1905–1990) Dutch mathematician

Source: The Concept and the Role of the Model in Mathematics and Natural and Social Sciences (1961), p. 79; Partly cited in: Norman L. Johnson and Samuel Kotz (1977) Urn Models and Their Application: an. Approach to Modern Discrete Probability Theory http://dis.unal.edu.co/~gjhernandezp/sim/hide/Urn%20Models%20and%20Their%20Application%20-%20An%20approach%20to%20modern%20discrete%20probability%20theory_Norman%20L.Johnson(Wiley%201977%20413s).pdf, John Wiley & Sons.

Mathematics , Problem , Chance

“I conceived, developed and applied in many areas a new geometry of nature, which finds order in chaotic shapes and processes. It grew without a name until 1975, when I coined a new word to denote it, fractal geometry, from the Latin word for irregular and broken up, fractus. Today you might say that, until fractal geometry became organized, my life had followed a fractal orbit.”

Benoît Mandelbrot (1924–2010) Polish-born, French and American mathematician

As quoted in Encyclopedia of World Biography (1997) edited by Thomson Gale

Life , Nature

“If every one of those good words—liberty, equality, fraternity, democracy, human rights—has been called "bourgeois", what on earth does that leave for us?”

Fang Lizhi (1936–2012) Professor of astrophysics; civil rights activist and dissident

Obituary of Fang Lizhi http://www.economist.com/node/21552551, The Economist, 14th April 2012, p. 98

Democracy

“I've come to understand that arguing with her about it has never solved anything. So instead of denying it, I've learned to take her hands, look her in the eyes, and respond with those three magic words that every woman wants to hear:
"You're right, sweetheart."”

Nicholas Sparks (1965) American writer and novelist

Nicholas Sparks, Prologue, p. 1
2000s, Three Weeks with My Brother (2004)

Understanding , Learning

“Europe is divided by the walls of 30 languages. Fortunately, among these national languages, around 10,000 words of Greek and Latin origin are common. This precious linguistic treasure ought to be used maximally without mutilating one single word or inventing others.”

Ric Berger (1894–1984) Swiss professor of design, decoration and art history

Europa es dividite per le muros de 30 linguas. Felicemente, inter iste linguas national, circa 10.000 parolas de origine grec e latin son commun. Iste preciose tresor linguistic debe esser utilisate al maximo sin mutilar un sol parola o inventar alteres.
Revista de Interlingua, nº 48, 1970.

“They are only deceitful words that make a mockery of justice when a judicial system detains, convicts and punishes people according to the biased and malicious opinions of security-military agencies and denies prisoners their legal rights.”

Narges Mohammadi (1972) Iranian human rights activist

As quoted in 1,000 Days in Prison: Narges Mohammadi Condemns Iranian Judiciary’s “Subservience” to Security Agencies https://www.iranhumanrights.org/2018/02/1000-days-in-prison-narges-mohammadi-condemns-iranian-judiciarys-subservience-to-security-agencies/ (February 21, 2018), Center for Human Rights in Iran.

People , Justice

“To talk about sensemaking is to talk about reality as an ongoing accomplishment that takes form when people make retrospective sense of the situations in which they find themselves and their creations. There is a strong reflexive quality to this process. People make sense of things by seeing a world on which they already imposed what they believe. In other words, people discover their own inventions. This is why sensemaking can be understood as invention and interpretations understood as discovery. These are complementary ideas. If sensemaking is viewed as an act of invention, then it is also possible to argue that the artifacts it produces include language games and texts.”

Karl E. Weick (1936) Organisational psychologist

Source: 1980s-1990s, Sensemaking in Organizations, 1995, p. 15

People , World , Game , Idea

“Every phenomenon of nature was a word, — the sign, symbol and pledge of a new, mysterious, inexpressible but all the more intimate union, participation and community of divine energies and ideas. Everything the human being heard from the beginning, saw with its eyes, looked upon and touched with its hands was a living word; for God was the word.”

Johann Georg Hamann (1730–1788) German philosopher

Sämtliche Werken, ed. Josef Nadler (1949-1957), vol. III, p. 32.

God , Communication , Idea , Nature

“What white people learned from the Civil Rights era was how not to appear to be racists, even to themselves. They came away from the 1960s knowing that racism was a matter of using the wrong words or expressing the wrong attitudes publicly. They trained their internal monologues to mirror an egalitarian or deracinated public discourse: no slurs, just a continual stream of euphemisms. That was the essence of white anti-racism: don't say the wrong thing.”

Crispin Sartwell (1958) American philosopher

White Liberals: We’re Not Racist (August 29, 2016)

People , Learning , Appearance , Training

“John F. Kennedy … murdered in Dallas by some hapless geek named Oswald who worked for either Castro, the mob, Jimmy Hoffa, the CIA, his dominatrix landlady or the odious, degenerate FBI chief J. Edgar Hoover. The list is long and crazy — maybe Marilyn Monroe's first husband fired those shots from the grassy knoll. Who knows? A whole generation of American journalists is still embarrassed by their failure to answer that question. JFK's ghost will haunt the corridors of power in America for as long as the grass is green and the rivers run to the sea. Take my word for it, Bubba. I have heard his footsteps for 30 years and I still feel guilty about not being able to explain the biggest news story of my lifetime to my son.”

Hunter S. Thompson (1937–2005) American journalist and author

Better than Sex (22 August 1994)
1990s

Feeling , Failure , Question , Grass

“The feelings and images aroused by the visible world are very difficult to express or are perhaps inexpressible with words because they are determined by forms, colors, space and light.”

Giorgio Morandi (1890–1964) Italian painter

in an interview with L. Vitali, 1957; as quoted in Morandi 1894 – 1964, published by Museo d'Arte Moderna di Bologna, ed: M. C. Bandera & R. Miracco - 2008; p. 295
1945 - 1964

World , Color , Feeling , Light

“The word taste has different meanings, which it is easy to mistake. There is a difference between the taste which in certain objects has an attraction for us, and the taste that makes us understand and distinguish the qualities we judge by.”

François de La Rochefoucauld (1613–1680) French author of maxims and memoirs

Reflections on Various Subjects (1665–1678), III. On Taste

Understanding

“Since all of the possibilities of a terrestrial origin have been either ruled out or seem improbable, and since the possibility of an extraterrestrial origin has not been able to be ruled out, I must conclude that an ETI (ExtraTerrestrial Intelligence) might have sent the signal that we received as the Wow! source. Of course, being a scientist, I await the reception of additional signals like the Wow! source that are able to be received and analyzed by many observatories. Thus, I must state that the origin of the Wow! signal is still an open question for me. There is simply too little data to draw many conclusions. In other words, as I stated above, I choose not to "draw vast conclusions from 'half-vast' data."”

Jerry R. Ehman American astronomer and astrophysicist

The Big Ear Wow! Signal : What We Know and Don't Know About It After 20 Years (1 September 1997); section: ETI

Intelligence , Question , Drawing

“Love in scripture is the fulfilling of the law. It involves the keeping of the ten commandments. Love to God is keeping the whole ten commandments, love to our neighbor is keeping the second table of the law. To respect his right to life, to home, to property, to reputation; in word, thought, and deed. So that, as Saint Paul sums it up, love is the fulfilling of the law.”

Rousas John Rushdoony (1916–2001) American theologian

Audio lectures, Hybridization and the Law (n. d.)

Love , Life , God , Law

“Ebbinghaus: Language is a system of conventional signs that can be voluntarily produced at any time.
Croce: Language is articulated, limited sound organized for the purpose of expression.
Dittrich: Language is the totality of expressive abilities of individual human beings and animals capable of being understood by at least one other individual.
Eisler: Language is any expression of experiences by a creature with a soul.
B. Erdmann: Language is not a kind of communication of ideas but a kind of thinking: stated or formulated thinking. Language is a tool, and in fact a tool or organ of thinking that is unique to us as human beings.
Forbes: Language is an ordered sequence of words by which a speaker expresses his thoughts with the intention of making them known to a hearer.
J. Harris : Words are the symbols of ideas both general and particular: of the general, primarily, essentially and immediately; of the particular, only secondarily, accidentally and mediately.
Hegel: Language is the act of theoretical intelligence in its true sense, for it is its outward expression.
Jespersen: Language is human activity which has the aim of communicating ideas and emotions.
Jodl: Verbal language is the ability of man to fashion, by means of combined tones and sounds based on a limited numbers of elements, the total stock of his perceptions and conceptions in this natural tone material in such a way that this psychological process is clear and comprehensible to others to its least detail.
Kainz : Language is a structure of signs, with the help of which the representation of ideas and facts may be effected, so that things that are not present, even things that are completely imperceptible to the senses, may be represented.
De Laguna: Speech is the great medium through which human co-operation is brought about.
Marty: Language is any intentional utterance of sounds as a sign of a psychic state.
Pillsbury-Meader: Language is a means or instrument for the communication of thought, including ideas and emotions.
De Saussure: Language is a system of signs expressive of ideas.
Schuchardt. The essence of language lies in communication.
Sapir: Language is a purely human and non-instinctive method of communicating ideas, emotions and desires by means of a system of voluntarily produced symbols.”

Géza Révész (1878–1955) Hungarian psychologist and musicologist

Footnote at pp. 126-127; As cited in: Adam Schaff (1962). Introduction to semantics, p. 313-314
The Origins and Prehistory of Language, 1956

Way , Soul , Intelligence , Communication

“Most people would never connect abortion to radical Islam, but you're smarter than most people. Don't just take my words for it. Look at the numbers. There are 1.2 billion Muslims in the world. America has, at last count, 320 million people: with so many illegals it is tough to get an accurate count. There are roughly four times as many Muslims as Americans. They keep adding to their ranks, and we keep importing illegals because our own people eliminate their babies. At this rate we will go the way of Europastan.”

Michael Savage (1942) U.S. radio talk show host, Commentator, and Author

Scorched Earth: Restoring the Country after Obama (2016)

People , World , Way , Time

“Every injury imports a damage, though it does not cost the party one farthing, and it is impossible to prove the contrary; for a damage is not merely pecuniary, but an injury imports a damage, when a man is hereby hindered of his right. As in an action for slanderous words, though a man does not lose a penny by reason of the speaking them, yet he shall have an action. So if a man give another a cuff on the ear, though it cost him nothing, no, not so much as a little diachylon, yet he shall have his action, for it is a personal injury.”

John Holt (Lord Chief Justice) (1642–1710) English lawyer and Lord Chief Justice of England

2 Raym. Rep. 955.
Ashby v. White (1703)

Personality

“Natural" is a very dangerous word to use about sexuality … Our society's notions of normality are completely fake and meta-trendy, since they rely on the changing standards of superstition, religion, Christianity and gender bias to define themselves. Americans, in particular, exhibit very childish reactions to sexual practices that are new to them, much like little kids who are offered a vegetable they haven't seen before: "That's disgusting!" "But darling, you haven't even tried it!”

Susie Bright (1958) American writer and feminist

"I don't care, I hate it, I hate it!
Introduction, Nothing But the Girl, 1996 ISBN 186047005X.

Hate , Religion , Nature , Change

“A word in the head is worth two in the book.”

Anu Garg (1967) Indian author

A.Word.A.Day (May 7, 2007) http://wordsmith.org/words/stormy_petrel.html

Books

“The media is the media and my perception for fandom has never been viewed as it being Geekish. They say or use this word Geekish, because they are not knowledgeable regarding fandom they only hear it from others who do not know either. I have met so many incredible people who are the total antithesis of being Geeky. I love all my fans and I view them like myself where their passion is Star Wars.”

Femi Taylor British writer

TW talks to the beautiful and super talented Femi Taylor, Oola from Return of the Jedi http://www.thetimewarriors.co.uk/blog/?p=21797 (October 28, 2013)

Love , War , People , Star

“Press on! there's no such word as fail!
Press nobly on! the goal is near,—
Ascend the mountain! breast the gale!
Look upward, onward,—never fear!
Why shouldst thou faint? Heaven smiles above,
Though storm and vapor intervene;
That sun shines on, whose name is Love,
Serenely o'er Life's shadow'd scene.”

Park Benjamin, Sr. (1809–1864) American journalist

Press On.

Love , Life , Fear , Smile

“All that progressives ask or desire is permission — in an era when "development," "evolution," is the scientific word — to interpret the Constitution according to the Darwinian principle; all they ask is recognition of the fact that a nation is a living thing and not a machine.”

Woodrow Wilson (1856–1924) American politician, 28th president of the United States (in office from 1913 to 1921)

Section II: “What Is Progress?”, p. 48 http://books.google.com/books?id=MW8SAAAAIAAJ&pg=PA48&dq=%22All+that+progressives+ask%22
1910s, The New Freedom (1913)

“Unlimited trust should only be placed in the real Word of the Revelation that we encounter in the faith transmitted by the Church.”

Pope Benedict XVI (1927) 265th Pope of the Catholic Church

During interview by Niels Christian Hvidt in 1999
1990s

Faith

“James A. Garfield must be our president. I know. Colored man, he is right on our questions, take my word for it. He is a typical American all over. He has shown us how man in the humblest circumstances can grapple with man, rise, and win. He has come from obscurity to fame, and we'll make him more famous. Has burst up through the incrustations that surround the poor, and has shown us how it is possible for an American to rise. He has built the road over which he traveled. He has buffeted the billows of adversity, and tonight, he swims in safety where Hancock, in despair, is going down.”

Frederick Douglass (1818–1895) American social reformer, orator, writer and statesman

Meeting of Colored Citizens http://books.google.com/books?id=Gss_INMTZQIC&pg=PA71&lpg=PA71&dq=%22He+has+buffeted+the+billows+of+adversity%22&source=bl&ots=AX-fsYd95E&sig=3j4dWH-cdeiSlKtJcFPmSAgLm4c&hl=en&sa=X&ei=CgvWU8GHGrO-sQTv0YH4BA&ved=0CB8Q6AEwAA#v=onepage&q=%22He%20has%20buffeted%20the%20billows%20of%20adversity%22&f=false (25 October 1880), Cooper Institute, New York.
1880s, Meeting of Colored Citizens (1880)

Color , Travel , Question , Despair

“Senator James Ah Koy: "I think he is doing a good job and I really support him for his strong words against Mr Downer." (1 October 2005)”

Frank Bainimarama (1954) Prime Minister of Fiji

"He is a strong man and we are blessed to have him in office. His priority is national security and that is why he is coming out strong on the Bill." (1 October 2005).

Support , Thinking , Strong

“Be careful of your word, even in keeping the most trifling appointment. But do not blame another for a failure of that kind till you have heard his excuse.”

James Burgh (1714–1775) British politician

The Dignity of Human Nature (1754)

Failure

“I was carrying out my duty, as the Japanese high commander of the Japanese Army in the Philippine Islands, to control my army with the best of my ability during wartime. Until now, I believe that I have tried my best for my army. As I said in the Manila Supreme Court that I have done everything with all my capacity, so I wouldn't be ashamed in front of the Gods for what I have done when I have died. But if you say to me "you do not have any ability to command the Japanese Army," I should say nothing in response, because it is my own nature. Now, our war criminal trial is going on in the Manila Supreme Court, so I wish to be justified under your kindness and righteousness. I know that all your American military affairs always have had tolerant and rightful judgment. When I had been investigated in the Manila court, I have had good treatment, a kind attitude from your good-natured officers who protected me all the time. I will never forget what they have done for me even if I die. I don't blame my executioners. I'll pray that the Gods bless them. Please send my thankful word to Col. Clarke and Lt. Col. Feldhaus, Lt. Col. Hendrix, Maj. Guy, Capt. Sandburg, Capt. Reel, at Manila court, and Col. Arnard. I thank you. I pray for the Emperor's long life and prosperity forever.”

Tomoyuki Yamashita (1885–1946) general in the Imperial Japanese Army

Last words. Quoted in "Yamashita Hanged Near Los Banos" - "New York Times" article - February 23, 1946.

Life , God , War , Guy

“You can tear a poem apart to see what makes it technically tick… You're back with the mystery of having been moved by words. The best craftsmanship always leaves holes and gaps in the works of the poem so that something that is not in the poem can creep, crawl, flash, or thunder in. The joy and function of poetry is, and was, the celebration of man, which is also the celebration of God.”

Dylan Thomas (1914–1953) Welsh poet and writer

Poetic Manifesto

God , Tear , Joy

“It had always been one of my convictions that Jews and Arabs could live together. Even as a child it never occurred to me that Jews might someday be living in Israel without Arabs, or separated from Arabs. On the contrary, for me it had always seemed perfectly normal for the two people to live and work side by side. That is the nature of life here and it always will be…. though Israel is a Jewish nation, it is, of course, not only a Jewish nation… I begin with the basic conviction that Jews and Arabs can live together. I have repeated that at every opportunity, not for journalists and not for popular consumption, but because I have never believed differently or thought differently, from my childhood on. I am not afraid of Arabs. I feel I can live with them. I believe I understand their problems. I know that we are both inhabitants of this land, and although the state is Jewish, that does not mean that Arabs should not be full citizens in every sense of the word.”

Ariel Sharon (1928–2014) prime minister of Israel and Israeli general

Ariel Sharon, ‎David Chanoff (2002) Warrior: An Autobiography p. 343, 542-3
2000s

Life , People , Feeling , Understanding

“The fact that we have not yet found the slightest evidence for life — much less intelligence — beyond this Earth does not surprise or disappoint me in the least. Our technology must still be laughably primitive, we may be like jungle savages listening for the throbbing of tom-toms while the ether around them carries more words per second than they could utter in a lifetime.”

Arthur C. Clarke (1917–2008) British science fiction writer, science writer, inventor, undersea explorer, and television series host

"Credo" (1991); also in Greetings, Carbon-Based Bipeds! : Collected Essays, 1934-1998 (1999), p. 360
1990s

Life , Disappointment , Intelligence

“Homeschooling is radical, in the root sense of the word: in Latin, radicus means root. Compulsory schooling (forced attendance), and now, in the twenty-first century, compulsory education (forced learning) are very recent petals and offshoots of the root way humankind has historically nurtured its young into responsible adults and active citizens. Family, community, religious institutions, and work were all integrated into the daily lives and upbringing of children… The concept of universal compulsory schooling is a very recent idea, one that is not even two hundred years old, yet we act as if it is an ancient, sure-fire way to make sure our children 'learn something.”

Pat Farenga American activist

"
A Brief History of Homeschooling (2002)

Children , Education , School , Family

“The suggestion that words are symbols for things, actions, qualities, relationships, et cetera, is naive, a gross simplification. Words are slippery customers. The full meaning of a word does not appear until it is placed in its context, and the context may serve an extremely subtle function -- as with puns, or double entendre. And even then the "meaning" will depend upon the listener, upon the speaker, upon their entire experience of language, upon their knowledge of one another, and upon the whole situation. Words do not "mean things" in a one-to-one relation like a code. Words, too, are empirical signs, not copies or models of anything; truly, onomatopoeia and gestures frequently seem to possess resemblance, but this resemblance does not bear too close examination. A cockerel may seem to say cook-a-doodle-do to an Englishman, but a German thinks it says kikeriki, and a Japanese kokke-kekko. Each can paint only with the phonetic sound of his own language.”

Colin Cherry (1914–1979) British scientist

Source: On Human Communication (1957), What Is It That We Communicate?, p. 10-11

Knowledge , Thinking , Appearance , Painting

“Pointed threats, they bluff with scorn
Suicide remarks are torn
From the fool's gold mouthpiece the hollow horn
Plays wasted words, proves to warn
That he not busy being born is busy dying”

Bob Dylan (1941) American singer-songwriter, musician, author, and artist

Song lyrics, Bringing It All Back Home (1965), It's Alright, Ma (I'm Only Bleeding)

Fools , Business , Suicide

“Cast thy burden on the Lord,
Only lean upon His word;
Thou wilt soon have cause to bless
His unchanging faithfulness.”

Rowland Hill (preacher) (1744–1833) British preacher

P. 600.

Faith

“The dissection of words into sounds is contrary to the purpose of language and applies musical principles to an independent realm whose symbolism is aimed at a logical comprehension of one’s environment.... the value of language depends on comprehensibility rather than musicality”

Richard Huelsenbeck (1892–1974) German poet

as quoted in The Sound of Poetry / The poetry of Sound, ed. Marjorie Perloff & Craig Dworkin; University of Chicago Press, 2009, p. 310, note 22
a critic on the sound-poetry of Dadaist Hugo Ball

Music , Dependency

“The East knows a true lucidity, but to be an inheritor of the West is to hack through jungles of indiscipline, devoured by vile ants and words unstrung from sense, until the dripping foliage of delirium opens out onto a space of comprehensive ruin. This has never been understood, nor can it be. The foulness of our fate only deepens with the centuries, as the tracts of insanity sprawl. From bodies gnawed by tropical fevers we swim out through collapse to inexistence in forever, destined for Undo.”

Nick Land (1962) British philosopher

"Shamanic Nietzsche" (1995), in Fanged Noumena, p. 223

Fate , Sense

“The computer's most profound aesthetic implication is that we are being forced to dismiss the classical view of art and reality which insists that man stand outside of reality in order to observe it, and, in art, requires the presence of the picture frame and the sculpture pedestal. The notion that art can be separated from its everyday environment is a cultural fixation [in other words, a mythic structure] as is the ideal of objectivity in science. It may be that the computer will negate the need for such an illusion by fusing both observer and observed, "inside" and "outside."”

Jack Burnham (1931) American art historian

It has already been observed that the everyday world is rapidly assuming identity with the condition of art.
Jack Burnham (1969). "The Aesthetics of Intelligent Systems" in Edward F. Fry, ed. (1970). On the Future of Art. New York: The Viking Press, p. 103; as cited in: Edward A. Shanken. "The House That Jack Built: Jack Burnham's Concept of 'Software' as a Metaphor for Art" http://www.artexetra.com/House.html in Leonardo Electronic Almanac 6:10 (November, 1998)

World , Art , Reality , Science

“"It'll be all right, Jerry." No it won't. He recognized Goober's voice and it was important to share the discovery with Goober. He had to tell Goober to play ball, to play football, to run, to make the team, to sell the chocolates, to do whatever they wanted you to do. He tried to voice the words but there was something wrong with his mouth, his teeth, his face. But he went ahead anyway, telling Goober what he needed to know. They tell you to do your thing but they don't mean it. They don't want you to do your thing, not unless it happens to be their thing, too. It's a laugh, Goober, a fake. Don't disturb the universe, Goober, no matter what the posters say. His eyes fluttered open and he saw Goober's face all askew, like a broken movie film. But he was able to see the concern the worry on his face. Take it easy, Goober, it doesn't even hurt anymore. See? I'm floating, floating above the pain. Just remember what I told you. It's important. Otherwise, they murder you.”

Robert Cormier book The Chocolate War

Source: The Chocolate War (1974), p. 258-259

Pain , Universe , Football , Hurt

“I was quite surprised to find out all the places that he knew
And so I asked the townfolk if his stories were true
They said— Old John was born here, he's lived here all his life
He's never had a woman, let alone a wife.
And very soon you'll find out as you check around
That no one named Corey's ever lived in this town
So I chided the old man 'bout the truth that I had heard
He smiled and said— Reality is only just a word.”

Harry Chapin (1942–1981) American musician

Corey's Coming
Song lyrics, On the Road to Kingdom Come (1976)

Life , Truth , Smile , Reality

“I am ashamed of the polished words,
so I hide them
throwing rough and crude notes
like the Rondanini Pietà
still raw with matter
on the lines of crystal
like the soul that sparkles in one’s eyes.
…”

Caterina Davinio (1957) Italian writer

Waiting for the End of the World
Source: Caterina Davinio, Aspettando la fine del mondo / Waiting for the End of the World, with parallel English text, English translation by Caterina Davinio and David W. Seaman, Fermenti, Rome 2012, p. 61. </ref>

Soul

“We begin with the people and they have to define the position. So relationships first, then build power among those people where they agree. So, based on support for thing like regional banks, interest rate cap, living wage, a very, very different kind of agenda. The words we don’t use much are equality, diversity, accessibility, inclusivity, because that’s not where people are. We work on living wage, anti-usury, regional banks, vocational colleges, workers on boards. And it’s a real change in the way that the party works.”

Maurice Glasman, Baron Glasman (1961) British philosopher

On the community organising agenda of Blue Labour, Interview with Australian Fabians: http://www.fabians.org.au/interview_with_maurice_glasman

People , Way , Support , Change

“In memory of those things these words were born.”

Geoffrey Hill (1932–2016) English poet and professor

Author note to his Collected Poems 1985.
Poetry

Memory

“Imagine how different our world would be if those discoveries had been explained and used for the benefit of everyone, if the humane perspective of Eratosthenes had been widely adopted and applied. But this was not to be. Alexandria was the greatest city the Western world had ever seen. People from all nations came here to live to trade to learn, on a given day these harbours were thronged with merchants and scholars and tourists, it's probably here that the word Cosmopolitan realised its true meaning of a citizen not just of a nation but of the Cosmos, to be a citizen of the Cosmos. Here were clearly the seeds of our modern world, but why didn't they take root and flourish why instead did the Western world slumber through a 1000 years of darkness until Columbus and Copernicus and their contemporaries rediscovered the work done here? I cannot give you a simple answer but I do know this, there is no record in the entire history of the library that any of the illustrious scholars and scientists who worked here ever seriously challenged a single political or economic or religious assumption of the society in which they lived. The permanence of the stars was questioned, the justice of slavery was not.”

Carl Sagan (1934–1996) American astrophysicist, cosmologist, author and science educator

28 min 30 sec
Cosmos: A Personal Voyage (1990 Update), Who Speaks for Earth? [Episode 13]

People , World , Justice , Imagination

“The best evidence of the Bible's being the word of God is to be found between its covers. It proves itself.”

Charles Hodge (1797–1878) American Presbyterian theologian

Source: Dictionary of Burning Words of Brilliant Writers (1895), P. 35.

God

“The odors perceived by the ant seem to lead to a highly standardized course of conduct; but the value of a simple stimulus, such as an odor, for conveying information depends not only on the information conveyed by the stimulus itself but on the whole nervous constitution of the sender and receiver of the stimulus as well. Suppose I find myself in the woods with an intelligent savage who cannot speak my language and whose language I cannot speak. Even without any code of sign language common to the two of us, I can learn a great deal from him. All I need to do is to be alert to those moments when he shows the signs of emotion or interest. I then cast my eyes around, perhaps paying special attention to the direction of his glance, and fix in my memory what I see or hear. It will not be long before I discover the things which seem important to him, not because he has communicated them to me by language, but because I myself have observed them. In other words, a signal without an intrinsic content may acquire meaning in his mind by what he observes at the time, and may acquire meaning in my mind by what I observed at the time. The ability that he has to pick out the moments of my special, active attention is in itself a language as varied in possibilities as the range of impressions that the two of us are able to encompass. Thus social animals may have an active, intelligent, flexible means of communication long before the development of language.”

Norbert Wiener book Cybernetics: Or Control and Communication in the Animal and the Machine

VIII. Information, Language, and Society. p. 157.
Cybernetics: Or Control and Communication in the Animal and the Machine (1948)

Intelligence , Communication , Learning , Memory

“Humanity … is never stationary. Its progressive march leads it to equality. Its regressive march goes back through every stage of privilege to human slavery, the final word of the right to property.”

Louis Auguste Blanqui (1805–1881) French socialist and political activist

in "August Blanqui, Heretical Communist," Radical Philosophy 185 (2014)

“The shortest and surest way of arriving at real knowledge is to unlearn the lessons we have been taught, to mount the first principles, and take nobody's word about them.”

Henry St John, 1st Viscount Bolingbroke (1678–1751) English politician and Viscount

As quoted in Treasury of Wisdom, Wit and Humor, Odd Comparisons and Proverbs (1891) by Adam Woolever

Way , Knowledge

“And he (Andy Van Dam) put his arm around my shoulders and we went for a little walk and he said, Randy, it's such a shame that people perceive you as so arrogant. Because it's going to limit what you're going to be able to accomplish in life. What a hell of a way to word "you're being a jerk." [laughter] Right? He doesn't say you're a jerk. He says people are perceiving you this way and he says the downside is it's going to limit what you're going to be able to accomplish.”

Randy Pausch book The Last Lecture

The Last Lecture (2008)
Variant: And he put his arm around my shoulders and we went for a little walk and he said, Randy, it’s such a shame that people perceive you as so arrogant. Because it’s going to limit what you’re going to be able to accomplish in life. What a hell of a way to word “you’re being a jerk.” [laughter] Right? He doesn’t say you’re a jerk. He says people are perceiving you this way and he says the downside is it’s going to limit what you’re going to be able to accomplish.

Life , People , Jerk , Way

“When an attacking force laid siege to a castle, they used techniques and weapons not unlike those developed by the ancient Romans. First they surrounded the castle in order to cut off all avenues of escape and resupply. They also built a camp ringed by ditches and palisades to secure their own position. Then they built siege engines—great stonethrowing devices—which they hoped would break down the castle walls. Although the knights’ chivalric code gave pride of place in warfare to a charge on horseback with lance or to hand-to-hand combat with swords, military engineers skilled in the mechanics of offensive engines had to first break through the walls. To breach the walls the army used battering rams, various kinds of projectiles, and mines. In other words they tried to go through, over, or under the walls.”

Marilyn Stokstad (1929–2016) art historian

Source: Medieval castles (2005), Ch. 2 : The Castle as Fortress : The Castle and Siege Warfare

Hope

“To die is to become like a child, at last one knows nothing, nothing of death and nothing of life, only that all distances are equally long and all words unintelligible but beautiful.”

Stig Dagerman book A Burnt Child

Source: A Burnt Child (1948), p. 251

Life , Death , Beauty

“What we know of the world comes to us through words, or, to look at it from the other direction, when we write a sentence, we create a world, which is not the world, but the world as is appears within a dimension of assessment.”

Stanley Fish (1938) American academic

Source: How To Write A Sentence And How To Read One (2011), Chapter 4, What Is A Good Sentence?, p. 39

World , Appearance

“Nothing can better express the feelings of the scientist towards the great unity of the laws of nature than in Immanuel Kant's words: "Two things fill the mind with ever new and increasing awe: the stars above me and the moral law within me."… Would he, who did not yet know of the evolution of the world of organisms, be shocked that we consider the moral law within us not as something given, a priori, but as something which has arisen by natural evolution, just like the laws of the heavens?”

Konrad Lorenz book On Aggression

Source: On Aggression (1963), Ch. XII : On the Virtue of Scientific Humility

World , Law , Feeling , Star

“Our research has found that public school textbooks are using the same word science for observational science and historical science. They arbitrarily define science as naturalism and outlaw the supernatural. They present molecules-to-man evolution as fact. They're imposing (I believe) the religion of naturalism or atheism on generations of students. You see, I assert that the word 'science' has been hijacked by secularists in teaching evolution to force the religion of naturalism on generations of kids.”

Ken Ham (1951) Australian young Earth creationist

"Bill Nye Debates Ken Ham" (February 4, 2014)

School , Religion , Nature , Science

“For earth cannot understand heavenly wisdom. Words enough and Dutch enough can be found for all things on earth, but I do not know any Dutch or any words that answer my purpose. Although I can express everything insofar as this is possible for a human being, no Dutch can be found for all I have said to you, since none exists to express these things, so far as I know”

Hadewijch (1200–1260) 13th-century Dutch poet and mystic

Letter XVII.
Letters

Wisdom , Understanding

“In so far as words are not used obviously to calculate technically relevant probabilities or for other practical purposes, … they are in danger of being suspect as sales talk of some kind.”

Max Horkheimer book Eclipse of Reason

Source: Eclipse of Reason (1947), p. 22.

“I've always believed that any instrumentalist is basically just an accompanist to the singer and the words. That's born out of being a fan of records before I was a fan of guitar players -- I'm interested in melody, lyrics, and the overall song. I don't like to waste notes, not even one. Who was it that said, "The reason why all those guitar players play so many notes is because they can't find the right one"? I like to put the right note in the right place, and my influences have always been those kinds of players. Keith Richards comes to mind, and I really like Nils Lofgren's soloing, because he's so melodic. I love John Lennon's rhythm playing, and George Harrison was an incredible guitarist.
There's a lot of guitar culture that I don't like at all. I find the traditional idea of the guitar hero to be really irrelevant to the 1990s. I don't think that young people are that impressed with some guy brandishing Spandex trousers and a hideously shaped guitar, playing that kind of masturbatory, egotistical noise. Being a soloist who wants to just display virtuosity is a dated philosophy, and I don't think there's any room for it in pop music. It's the last stand of late-'60s/early-'70s rockism, and it should have gone a long time ago.”

Johnny Marr (1963) musician

from an interview by Joe Gore, Guitar Player(January 1990).

Love , People , Music , Guy

“No, I have already said it elsewhere. This earth has had all the exoticism washed out of it. If in a hundred years we have not established contact with some other planet (but we will), or, next best, with the earth's interior, humanity is finished. There is no longer a means of living, we explode, we go to war, we perpetrate evil of all sorts; we are, in a word, incapable of remaining any longer on this rind. We are in mortal pain; both from the dimensions as they now stand, and from the lack of any future dimension to which we can turn, now that our tour of the earth has been done to death.”

Henri Michaux (1899–1984) painter, poet, writer

These opinions, I know, are quite sufficient to have me looked down upon as a mind of the fourth order.
Ecuador (1929)

Death , Pain , War , Evil

“Like dew on drooping blossoms,
Like breath from Holy place,
Laden with health and healing,
Come Thy deep words of grace:
"Thy strength is all in leaning
On One who fights for thee;
Thine is the helpless clinging,
And mine the victory."”

Hetty Bowman (1838–1872)

Reported in Josiah Hotchkiss Gilbert, Dictionary of Burning Words of Brilliant Writers (1895), p. 595.

Health , Victory , Fight

“Why Baroque? Because it is set in the Baroque, and it IS baroque. Why Cycle? Because I am trying to avoid the T-word ("trilogy"). In my mind this work is something like 7 or 8 connected novels. These have been lumped together into three volumes because it is more convenient from a publishing standpoint, but they could just as well have been put all together in a single immense volume or separated into 7 or 8 separate volumes. So to slap the word "trilogy" on it would be to saddle it with a designation that is essentially bogus. Having said that, I know everyone's going to call it a trilogy anyway.”

Neal Stephenson (1959) American science fiction writer

Baroque Cycle entry in now-defunct MetaWeb

“Lemony Snicket: (narrating) Reading poetry, even if you are only reading to find a secret message within its words, can often give one a feeling of power, the way you can feel powerful if you are the only one who brought an umbrella on a rainy day, or the only one who knows how to untie knots when you're taken hostage.”

Daniel Handler book The Grim Grotto

The Grim Grotto (2004)

Secret , Way , Feeling , Reading

“The fundamental error of the theologians of the new faith of the present day consists in this, that they think one can without hesitation acknowledge the validity of the same scientific method in the realm of nature which they refuse to apply to that of history. … What consequence now will follow the application of the doctrine of evolution to the theological consideration of history? First of all, it is evident that it excludes miracles in every sense of the word—not merely the nature-miracle (this the men of the new faith drop without pain) but also just as much the spirit-miracle, i. e. the intervention of a foreign power in the human soul, whereby conditions are produced in it which do not result from the causal connection with antecedent conditions. If it is the methodic cardinal proposition of the science of today that we have to explain every condition as the causally determined development out of a preceding one, this excludes on principle the appearance of a condition, event, action, or personality which is not explicable out of the factors of the preceding conditions.”

Otto Pfleiderer (1839–1908) German Protestant theologian

Source: Evolution and Theology (1900), pp. 8-9.

Men , Pain , Faith , Error

“We are the Choice of the Will: God, when He gave the word
That called us into line, set in our hand a sword;

Set us a sword to wield none else could lift and draw,
And bade us forth to the sound of the trumpet of the Law.”

William Ernest Henley (1849–1903) English poet, critic and editor

Source: Poems (1898), Rhymes And Rhythms, II

God , Law , Drawing

“Roll, roll me away,
Won't you roll me away tonight?
I too am lost, I feel double-crossed.
And I'm sick of what's wrong and what's right.
We never even said a word,
We just walked out and got on that bike.
And we rolled.
And we rolled clean out of sight.”

Bob Seger (1945) American singer-songwriter

Roll Me Away
Song lyrics, The Distance (1982)

Feeling

“Sir Timothy was a fluent speaker, and when there was nothing to be said was possessed of a great plenty of words. And he was gifted with that peculiar power which enables a man to have the last word in every encounter, — a power which we are apt to call repartee, which is in truth the readiness which comes from continual practice. You shall meet two men of whom you shall know the one to be endowed with the brilliancy of true genius, and the other to be possessed of but moderate parts, and shall find the former never able to hold his own against the latter. In a debate, the man of moderate parts will seem to be greater than the man of genius. But this skill of tongue, this glibness of speech is hardly an affair of intellect at all. It is, — as is style to the writer, — not the wares which he has to take to market, but the vehicle in which they may be carried. Of what avail to you is it to have filled granaries with corn if you cannot get your corn to the consumer? Now Sir Timothy was a great vehicle, but he had not in truth much corn to send.”

Anthony Trollope book The Duke's Children

Source: The Duke's Children (1879), Ch. 26

Men , Truth , Parting

“Cultivate quietness in word, quietness in deed, likewise in speech and gait; and avoid impetuous eagerness, for then the mind will remain steady, and will not be agitated by your eagerness. … For the mind, seated on high on a quiet throne looking intently towards God, must control the passions, … so that your quietness may be adorned by good proportion and your bearing may appear something divine.”

Clement of Alexandria (150–215) Christian theologian

Source: To the Newly Baptized, p. 371.

God , Appearance , Passion

“Multiculturalism is a false euphemism. The real word is "multiracialism", but the word "race" has been recently erased from French legislature, because supposedly there are no races. Here we can observe a new illogicality of the System. There are supposedly no races, but the media are increasingly talking about the rise of racism. How then racists can exist, if there are no races? Nevertheless, we have all too much empirical data showing precisely that multi-ethnic and multicultural countries are prone to ethnic and racial conflicts. What former Yugoslavia went through is in store for the EU - of course, in a different form. One of the additional reasons I left American academia is that I could no longer tolerate giving undeserved passing grades to my American students of African and Hispanic origin, whose IQ and speed of symbolic reasoning were much lower than that of my white American students. It is a form of tyranny of political correctness, much like the former Soviet Union.”

Tomislav Sunić (1953) Croatian-American writer, translator and professor

Interview for hkv.hr https://www.hkv.hr/razgovori/16742-dr-tomislav-sunic-osnovni-problem-hrvatske-je-ostavstina-jugoslavenstva-i-komunizma.html, 15 January 2014

Speed , Falseness , Country

“The words nearly break my heart, and I feel something crumble inside me. The truth is often a terrible thing, and I wish again that I were someone else. But it is too late now, too late to change anything. I am old and alone and I'm dying a little more with each passing hour. I'm tired, more tired than I've ever been.”

Nicholas Sparks (1965) American writer and novelist

Ira Levinson, Chapter 5 Ira, p. 80
2009, The Longest Ride (2013)

Truth , Feeling , Change , Heart

“Not every "return to Zion" is a religiously significant achievement: one sort of return which may be described in the words of the prophet: "When you returned you defiled my land and made my heritage an abomination"”

Yeshayahu Leibowitz (1903–1994) israeli intellectual

Jeremiah 2:7
"The Territories" (1968)

“Fortunately, when he lacks reason he also lacks words.”

Joseph Joubert (1754–1824) French moralist and essayist

“The Volta is taken from a Federico Fellini book about his films, what he characterizes as a changing of scene, or a turnaround; a new scene to him is called Volta. Y'know, changing of time and the changeover. And Mars, we're just fascinated by science fiction so and it's something that ultimately looked as in anything I write, its meaning is always up to the listener. As the way we write songs and words, if it looks great on paper then to us it's like painting, so if it looks good meaning the second then people usually have a better interpretation than we ever would.”

Cedric Bixler-Zavala (1974) American singer

Bixler-Zavala about the bandname The Mars Volta http://www.experiencefestival.com/a/The_Mars_Volta_-_Etymology_and_trivia/id/2070708

People , Books , Way , Science

“I was very glad when Mr. Attlee described my speeches in the late war as expressing the will not only of Parliament but of the whole nation. I have never accepted what many people have kindly said—namely, that I inspired the nation. Their will was resolute and remorseless and it proved unconquerable. It fell to me to express it and if I found the right word you must remember that I have always earned my living by my pen, and by my tongue.”

Winston S. Churchill (1874–1965) Prime Minister of the United Kingdom

Speech in Westminster Hall (30 November 1954), quoted in The Times (1 December 1954), p. 11
Post-war years (1945–1955)

War , People

“But ne'er the subject of your work proclaim
In its own colors and its genuine name;
Let it by distant tokens be conveyed,
And wrapped in other words, and covered in their shade.
At last the subject from the friendly shroud
Bursts out, and shines the brighter from the cloud;
Then the dissolving darkness breaks away,
And every object glares in open day.
Thus great Ulysses' toils were I to choose
For the main theme that should employ my Muse,
By his long labors of immortal fame
Should shine my hero, but conceal his name;
As one who, lost at sea, had nations seen,
And marked their towns, their manners, and their men,
Since Troy was leveled to the dust by Greece—
Till a few lines epitomized the piece.”
Jam vero cum rem propones, nomine nunquam Prodere conveniet manifesto: semper opertis Indiciis, longe et verborum ambage petita Significant, umbraque obducunt: inde tamen, ceu Sublustri e nebula, rerum tralucet imago Clarius, et certis datur omnia cernere signis. Hinc si dura mihi passus dicendus Ulysses, Non ilium vero memorabo nomine, sed qui Et mores hominum multorum vidit et urbes Naufragus, eversae post saeva incendia Trojae, Addam alia, angustis complectens omnia dictis.

Marco Girolamo Vida (1485–1566) Italian bishop

Book II, line 40
De Arte Poetica (1527)

Men , Color , Distant , Sea

“After the Second Vatican Council, the impression arose that the pope really could do anything in liturgical matters, especially if he were acting on the mandate of an ecumenical council. Eventually, the idea of the givenness of the liturgy, the fact that one cannot do with it what one will, faded from the public consciousness of the West. In fact, the First Vatican Council had in no way defined the pope as an absolute monarch. On the contrary, it presented him as the guarantor of obedience to the revealed Word. The pope's authority is bound to the Tradition of faith, and that also applies to the liturgy. It is not "manufactured" by the authorities. Even the pope can only be a humble servant of its lawful development and abiding integrity and identity. … The authority of the pope is not unlimited; it is at the service of Sacred Tradition…. The greatness of the liturgy depends - we shall have to repeat this frequently — on its unspontaneity.”

Pope Benedict XVI (1927) 265th Pope of the Catholic Church

2000, The Spirit of the Liturgy (2000)

Faith , Law , Way , Idea

“The word 'conservative' is used by the BBC as a portmanteau word of abuse for anyone whose views differ from the insufferable, smug, sanctimonious, naïve, guilt-ridden, wet, pink orthodoxy of that sunset home of the third-rate minds of that third-rate decade, the nineteen-sixties.”

Norman Tebbit (1931) English politician

The Independent (24 February, 1990).

Home

“A barren superfluity of words.”

Samuel Garth (1661–1719) British writer

The Dispensary, Canto II, line 95.

“As he had so many times before, Taleswapper addressed a few silent words to God, which always came down to this question: Why do you put us to so much trouble, when it all comes to naught in the end?…And, as usual, God had nothing much to say to Taleswapper when his questioning was done.”

Orson Scott Card (1951) American science fiction novelist

Source: The Tales of Alvin Maker, Red Prophet (1988), Chapter 15.

God , Question , Time

“Obscuritie in affection of words, & indigested concets, is pedanticall and childish…”

George Chapman (1559–1634) English dramatist, poet, and translator

Preface to Ovid's Banquet of Sense (1595)

“Recall the word you gave:
to count your way across the depths of this arid world,
where you would yoke the waves,
and lay a bed of shining pearls!
I dream it every night:
the ringing of the pail,
the motes of sand dislodged,
the shucking, quick and bright;
the twinned and cast-off shells reveal a single heart of white.”

Joanna Newsom (1982) American musician

Divers https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Divers_(Joanna_Newsom_album) (2015)

World , Dreams , Way , Heart

“And then she (Brooke Sheilds) says the ill-fated words "You have to put this in your act". And I said "What, I would never!"”

Kathy Griffin (1960) American actress and comedian

Because it's a private time!!
Allegedly (2004)

Fate , Time

“You were asking my opinion on your work of art, my dear Jean [= Duchamp's brother-in-law Jean Crotti, who asked Duchamp his comment on an art-work he made]... Artists throughout the ages are like Monte Carlo gamblers and the blind lottery pulls some of them through and ruin others... I do not believe in painting per se – A painting is made not by the artist but by those who look at it and grant it their favors. In other words, no painters knows himself or what he is doing – There is no outward sign explaining why a Fra Angelico and a Leonardo [da Vinci] are equally 'recognized.”

Marcel Duchamp (1887–1968) French painter and sculptor

It all takes place at the level of our old friend luck.
Quote from Duchamp's letter to Jean Crotti (Duchamp's brother-in-law) and his sister Suzanne Duchamp, New York 17 Augustus 1952; as cited in The Duchamp Book, ed. Gavin Parkinson, Tate Publishing, London 2008 p. 167
1951 - 1968

Happiness , Age , Law , Art

“"Don't be afraid," I muttered. "We belong together."
I was abruptly overwhelmed by the truth of my own words. This moment was so perfect, so right, there was no way to doubt it.”

Stephenie Meyer (1973) American author

Bella Cullen to Edward Cullen, p. 85
Twilight series, Breaking Dawn (2008)

Truth , Way , Perfection

“Yesterday's songs
Don't stay around long,
Not much anymore.
Yesterday's words
Don't make themselves heard
Like they did before.”

Neil Diamond (1941) American singer-songwriter

Yesterday's Songs
Song lyrics, On the Way to the Sky (1981)

“Humanity is a huge aggregate lie, and a huge lie is less than a small truth. Humanity is less, far less than the individual, because the individual may sometimes be capable of truth, and humanity is a tree of lies. And they say that love is the greatest thing; they persist in SAYING this, the foul liars, and just look at what they do! Look at all the millions of people who repeat every minute that love is the greatest, and charity is the greatest— and see what they are doing all the time. By their works ye shall know them, for dirty liars and cowards, who daren't stand by their own actions, much less by their own words.”

D.H. Lawrence book Women in Love

Source: Women in Love (1920), Ch. 11

Love , People , Truth , Lie

“This option the consumerit could. The present admirable constitution of the courts of justice in England was, perhaps, originally in a great measure, formed by this emulation, which anciently took place between their respective judges; each judge endeavouring to give, in his own court, the speediest and most effectual remedy, which the law would admit, for every sort of injustice. (The Wealth of Nations [New York: Modern Library, 1937]; originally 1776), p. 679--> retains of being able to buy security wherever he pleases brings about a constant emulation among all the producers, each producer striving to maintain or augment his clientele with the attraction of cheapness or of faster, more complete and better justice.If, on the contrary, the consumer is not free to buy security wherever he pleases, you forthwith see open up a large profession dedicated to arbitrariness and bad management. Justice becomes slow and costly, the police vexatious, individual liberty is no longer respected, the price of security is abusively inflated and inequitably apportioned, according to the power and influence of this or that class of consumers. The protectors engage in bitter struggles to wrest customers from one another. In a word, all the abuses inherent in monopoly or in communism crop up.”

Gustave de Molinari (1819–1912) Belgian political economist and classical liberal theorist

Source: The Production of Security (1849), p. 57-59

Justice , Law , Communication , Wealth

“For me the music is a vehicle for my lyrics. It's a chance to get some really good words across.”

Joe Strummer (1952–2002) British musician, singer, actor and songwriter

As quoted in [Coon, Caroline, w:en:Caroline Coon, 1988: The New Wave Punk Rock Explosion, http://homepage.mac.com/blackmarketclash/Bands/Clash/Clash%20gigography/1976%20DATES.html, 2011-09-21, 1977, Hawthorn, London, 0801561299., 79262599, http://web.archive.org/20071026052834/homepage.mac.com/blackmarketclash/Bands/Clash/Clash%20gigography/1976%20DATES.html, 2007-10-26]

Music , Chance

“I lie back. They've "refurbished" the room. I loathe the word, its blunt sound (as if someone with a cold were trying to say "furnished"), and don't say it without irony.”

Amit Chaudhuri (1962) contemporary Indian-English novelist

Friend of My Youth (2017)

Lie

“A few months before the murder [of Domitian] a raven perched on the Capitol and croaked out the words: "All will be well!" – a portent which some wag explained in the following verse:
There was a raven, strange to tell,
Perched upon Jove's own gable, whence
He tried to tell us "All is well!" –
But had to use the future tense.”
Ante paucos quam occideretur menses cornix in Capitolino elocuta est: εσται πάντα καλως, nec defuit qui ostentum sic interpretaretur: <br/>Nuper Tarpeio quae sedit culmine cornix, <br/>"Est bene" non potuit dicere, dixit: "Erit."

Sueton book The Twelve Caesars

Ante paucos quam occideretur menses cornix in Capitolino elocuta est: εσται πάντα καλως, nec defuit qui ostentum sic interpretaretur:
Nuper Tarpeio quae sedit culmine cornix,
"Est bene" non potuit dicere, dixit: "Erit."
Source: The Twelve Caesars, Domitian, Ch. 23

Future

“All wrong. The words seemed in this moment to describe Hale’s whole life.”

Tim Powers book Declare

Source: Declare (2001), Chapter 7 (p. 182)

Life

“To a linguist, the phenomenon is familiar: the euphemism treadmill. People invent new "polite" words to refer to emotionally laden or distasteful things, but the euphemism becomes tainted by association and the new one that must be found acquires its own negative connotations. "Water closet" becomes "toilet" (originally a term for any body care, as in "toilet kit"), which becomes "bathroom," which becomes "rest room," which becomes "lavatory." … The euphemism treadmill shows that concepts, not words, are in charge. Give a concept a new name, and the name becomes colored by the concept; the concept does not become freshened by the name.”

Steven Pinker (1954) psychologist, linguist, author

We will know we have achieved equality and mutual respect when names for minorities stay put.
The game of the name, Baltimore Sun, 1994-04-06, http://pinker.wjh.harvard.edu/articles/media/1994_04_03_newyorktimes.pdf, 1994-04-03, 2011-01-19 http://articles.baltimoresun.com/1994-04-06/news/1994096202_1_dutch-words-language,

People , Color , Water