Quotes about wording
A collection of quotes on the topic of word, wording, use, other.
Quotes about wording
Yuzuru Hanyu
(1994) Japanese figure skater (1994-)
Other quotes, 2019
Source: Interview after the freeskate at Skate Canada 2019, as transcribed by the International Skating Union, published on 28 October 2019 on their official YouTube-Channel https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2guVNCyGL1M.
Robert Baden-Powell
(1857–1941) lieutenant-general in the British Army, writer, founder and Chief Scout of the Scout Movement
“In three words I can sum up everything I've learned about life — It goes on.”
Robert Frost
(1874–1963) American poet
As quoted in The Harper Book of Quotations (1993) edited by Robert I. Fitzhenry, p. 261
General sources
Variant: In three words I can sum up everything I've learned about life: it goes on.
Michael Jackson
(1958–2009) American singer, songwriter and dancer
http://rocknrollworldmagazine.com/2015/08/82915-rock-history/
“Music touches us emotionally, where words alone can't.”
Johnny Depp
(1963) American actor, film producer, and musician
Marco Polo
(1254–1324) Venetian explorer and merchant noted for travel to central and eastern Asia
Io parlo parlo ... ma chi m'ascolta ritiene solo le parole che aspetta. ... Chi comanda al racconto non è la voce: è l'orecchio.
Marco Polo to Kublai Khan, in Italo Calvino's Invisible Cities (1974), ch. 9
In fiction
Freddie Mercury
(1946–1991) British singer, songwriter and record producer
As quoted in "Rock On Freddie" (1985).
“In the end, we will remember not the words of our enemies but the silence of our friends.”
Martin Luther King, Jr.
(1929–1968) American clergyman, activist, and leader in the American Civil Rights Movement
1960s, The Trumpet of Conscience (1967)
Variant: In the end, we will remember not the words of our enemies, but the silence of our friends.
“Words, how little they mean when you're a little too late.”
Taylor Swift
(1989) American singer-songwriter
Sad Beautiful Tragic
Song lyrics, Red (2012)
“You gotta be careful: don't say a word to nobody about nothing anytime ever.”
Johnny Depp
(1963) American actor, film producer, and musician
“You can get much farther with a kind word and a gun than you can with a kind word alone.”
Al Capone
(1899–1947) American gangster
Misquoted in Forbes (6 October 1986), actually attributed to humorist Professor Irwin Corey (1953) http://quoteinvestigator.com/2013/11/03/kind-gun/
Disputed
Variant: You can get more with a kind word and a gun than you can with a kind word alone.
“Another word for creativity is courage.”
Henri Matisse
(1869–1954) French artist
Variant: Creativity takes courage.
“If you could say it in words, there would be no reason to paint.”
Edward Hopper
(1882–1967) prominent American realist painter and printmaker
Source: Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas
Meryl Streep
(1949) American actress
Misattributed to Meryl Streep (and widely disseminated on the Internet as of August/September 2014), this quote is allegedly a translation of a text by the author José Micard Teixeira, the original of which begins (in Portuguese): "Já não tenho paciência para algumas coisas, não porque me tenha tornado arrogante..."
Misattributed
“I hate the word homophobia. It's not a phobia. Why would I be scared of a faggot?”
Morgan Freeman
(1937) American actor, film director, and narrator
@MorgonFreeman on Twitter, a now-defunct account also known as "Tweets from God". This Twitter account was never written or controlled by Freeman, and was a parody of his character in the films Bruce Almighty and Evan Almighty. snopes.com: Morgan Freeman on Homophobia http://www.snopes.com/politics/sexuality/freeman.asp
Misattributed
Sylvester Stallone
(1946) American actor, screenwriter, and film director
http://twitter.com/TheSlyStallone/status/27158992333
“A thug changes, and love changes
and best friends become strangers, word up”
Nas
(1973) American rapper, record producer and entrepreneur
The Message
On Albums, It Was Written (1996)
“You never know when a moment and a
few sincere words can have an impact on a life.”
Zig Ziglar
(1926–2012) American motivational speaker
Source: The Infernal Devices, Clockwork Angel (2010), p. 87
Christopher Marlowe
(1564–1593) English dramatist, poet and translator
Source: Tamburlaine the Great, Part 1
Annie Ernaux
(1940) French writer
Source: Quoted in Melodrama after the tears, ed. Jörg Metelmann and Scott Loren (Amsterdam University Press, 2016), p. 178
“Where words fail, music speaks.”
Hans Christian Andersen
(1805–1875) Danish author, fairy tale writer, and poet
“We're fascinated by the words--but where we meet is in the silence behind them.”
Ram Dass
(1931–2019) American contemporary spiritual teacher and the author of the 1971 book Be Here Now
Robert Baden-Powell
(1857–1941) lieutenant-general in the British Army, writer, founder and Chief Scout of the Scout Movement
“A word is dead
When it is said,
Some say.
I say it just
Begins to live
That day.”
Source: The Complete Poems of Emily Dickinson
Sylvia Plath
(1932–1963) American poet, novelist and short story writer
Source: The Unabridged Journals of Sylvia Plath
The Second Notebook
No Longer Human
Dwayne Johnson
(1972) American actor and professional wrestler
The Rock's return to WWE Raw as host of WrestleMania XXVII (14 February, 2011) http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=h8ejiG5-BtA&feature=related.
“The Word equals the book or, holy scripture. That is religion.”
Mwanandeke Kindembo
(1996) Congolese author
Leonardo Da Vinci
(1452–1519) Italian Renaissance polymath
The Notebooks of Leonardo Da Vinci (1938), XLV Prophecies
Mustafa Kemal Atatürk
(1881–1938) Turkish army officer, revolutionary, and the first President of Turkey
İki Mustafa Kemal vardır: Biri ben, et ve kemik, geçici Mustafa Kemal... İkinci Mustafa Kemal, onu "ben" kelimesiyle ifade edemem; o, ben değil, bizdir! O, memleketin her köşesinde yeni fikir, yeni hayat ve büyük ülkü için uğraşan aydın ve savaşçı bir topluluktur. Ben, onların rüyasını temsil ediyorum. Benim teşebbüslerim, onların özlemini çektikleri şeyleri tatmin içindir. O Mustafa Kemal sizsiniz, hepinizsiniz. Geçici olmayan, yaşaması ve başarılı olması gereken Mustafa Kemal odur.
As quoted in Ataturk: First President and Founder of the Turkish Republic (2002) by Yüksel Atillasoy, p. 19
“A multitude of words is no proof of a prudent mind.”
Thales
(-624–-547 BC) ancient Greek philosopher and mathematician
As quoted in Diogenes Laërtius, The Lives and Opinions of Eminent Philosophers, I, 35; as translated in Dictionary of Quotations (Classical) edited by Thomas Benfield Harbottle, p. 455
Also translated as: "Many words do not declare an understanding heart."
“Letters are signs of things, symbols of words, whose power is so great that without a voice they speak to us the words of the absent; for they introduce words by the eye, not by the ear.”
Litterae autem sunt indices rerum, signa verborum, quibus tanta vis est, ut nobis dicta absentium sine voce loquantur. Verba enim per oculos non per aures introducunt.
Bk. 1, ch. 3, sect. 1; p. 96.
Etymologiae
“Well, then,” said Callias, “take a place; for the guests, though well fed, as you observe, on seriousness, are perhaps rather ill supplied with laughter.”
Symposium, 1.11-13
Henry VIII of England
(1491–1547) King of England from 1509 until 1547
Last speech to parliament, December 24, 1545.
English Church History from the Death of King Henry VII to the Death of Archbishop Parker, Rev. Alfred Plummer, 1905, Edinburg, T. & T. Clark, p. 85. http://books.google.com/books?id=ofMOAAAAQAAJ&pg=PA85&dq=%22+you+be+permitted+to+read+holy+scriptures%22
“False words are not only evil in themselves, but they infect the soul with evil.”
Socrates
(-470–-399 BC) classical Greek Athenian philosopher
Phaedo 115e
literally: 'For know well', he said, 'o dearest Kriton, that to not speak well is not only sinful by itself, but lets evil intrude into the soul.'(εὖ γὰρ ἴσθι, ἦ δ᾽ ὅς, ὦ ἄριστε Κρίτων, τὸ μὴ καλῶς λέγειν οὐ μόνον εἰς αὐτὸ τοῦτο πλημμελές, ἀλλὰ καὶ κακόν τι ἐμποιεῖ ταῖς ψυχαῖς.)
Plato, Phaedo
“Let silence be your general rule; or say only what is necessary and in few words.”
Epictetus
(50–138) philosopher from Ancient Greece
Golden Sayings of Epictetus
Context: Let silence be your general rule; or say only what is necessary and in few words. We shall, however, when occasion demands, enter into discourse sparingly, avoiding such common topics as gladiators, horse-races, athletes; and the perpetual talk about food and drink. Above all avoid speaking of persons, either in the way of praise or blame, or comparison. If you can, win over the conversation of your company to what it should be by your own. But if you should find yourself cut off without escape among strangers and aliens, be silent. (164).
Jiddu Krishnamurti
(1895–1986) Indian spiritual philosopher
1960s, Freedom From The Known (1969)
Context: Violence is not merely killing another. It is violence when we use a sharp word, when we make a gesture to brush away a person, when we obey because there is fear. So violence isn't merely organized butchery in the name of God, in the name of society or country. Violence is much more subtle, much deeper, and we are inquiring into the very depths of violence.
When you call yourself an Indian or a Muslim or a Christian or a European, or anything else, you are being violent. Do you see why it is violent? Because you are separating yourself from the rest of mankind. When you separate yourself by belief, by nationality, by tradition, it breeds violence. So a man who is seeking to understand violence does not belong to any country, to any religion, to any political party or partial system; he is concerned with the total understanding of mankind.
Joseph Stalin
(1879–1953) General secretary of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union
Anarchism or Socialism (1906)
Context: We are not the kind of people who, when the word "anarchism" is mentioned, turn away contemptuously and say with a supercilious wave of the hand: "Why waste time on that, it's not worth talking about!" We think that such cheap "criticism" is undignified and useless.
Nor are we the kind of people who console themselves with the thought that the Anarchists "have no masses behind them and, therefore, are not so dangerous." It is not who has a larger or smaller "mass" following today, but the essence of the doctrine that matters. If the "doctrine" of the Anarchists expresses the truth, then it goes without saying that it will certainly hew a path for itself and will rally the masses around itself. If, however, it is unsound and built up on a false foundation, it will not last long and will remain suspended in mid-air. But the unsoundness of anarchism must be proved.
Some people believe that Marxism and anarchism are based on the same principles and that the disagreements between them concern only tactics, so that, in the opinion of these people, no distinction whatsoever can be drawn between these two trends.
This is a great mistake.
We believe that the Anarchists are real enemies of Marxism. Accordingly, we also hold that a real struggle must be waged against real enemies.
Niels Bohr
(1885–1962) Danish physicist
Quoted in Philosophy of Science Vol. 37 (1934), p. 157, and in The Truth of Science : Physical Theories and Reality (1997) by Roger Gerhard Newton, p. 176
Context: What is it that we humans depend on? We depend on our words... Our task is to communicate experience and ideas to others. We must strive continually to extend the scope of our description, but in such a way that our messages do not thereby lose their objective or unambiguous character … We are suspended in language in such a way that we cannot say what is up and what is down. The word "reality" is also a word, a word which we must learn to use correctly.
“Words are for meaning: when you've got the meaning, you can forget the words.”
Zhuangzi
(-369–-286 BC) classic Chinese philosopher
Variant: "Where can I find a man who has forgotten words? He is the one I would like to talk to."
Context: A trap is for fish: when you've got the fish, you can forget the trap. A snare is for rabbits: when you've got the rabbit, you can forget the snare. Words are for meaning: when you've got the meaning, you can forget the words. Where can I find someone who's forgotten words so I can have a word with him?...
Friedrich Schiller
(1759–1805) German poet, philosopher, historian, and playwright
Hope, Faith, and Love (c. 1786); also known as "The Words of Strength", as translated in The Common School Journal Vol. IX (1847) edited by Horace Mann, p. 386
Context: There are three lessons I would write, —
Three words — as with a burning pen,
In tracings of eternal light
Upon the hearts of men. Have Hope. Though clouds environ now,
And gladness hides her face in scorn,
Put thou the shadow from thy brow, —
No night but hath its morn. Have Faith. Where'er thy bark is driven, —
The calm's disport, the tempest's mirth, —
Know this: God rules the hosts of heaven,
The habitants of earth. Have Love. Not love alone for one,
But men, as man, thy brothers call;
And scatter, like the circling sun,
Thy charities on all. Thus grave these lessons on thy soul, —
Hope, Faith, and Love, — and thou shalt find
Strength when life's surges rudest roll,
Light when thou else wert blind.
Eddie Izzard
(1962) British stand-up comedian, actor and writer
Dress to Kill (1998)
Source: Eddie Izzard: Dress to Kill
Context: I had to chat up girls, and I'd only tagged them before. I didn't have the verbal power to be able to say, "Susan, I saw you in the classroom today. As the sun came from behind the clouds, a burst of brilliant light caught your hair, it was haloed in front of me. You turned, your eyes flashed fire into my soul, I immediately read the words of Dostoevsky and Karl Marx, and in the words of Albert Schweitzer, 'I fancy you.' " But no! At 13, you're just going, " 'Ello, Sue. I saw you in the room... I've got legs, have you? Oh yeah... Do you like bread? I've got a French loaf. [mimes smacking her with the loaf and dashing off] Bye! (I love you!)"
“I understand, and not knowing how to express myself without pagan words, I’d rather remain silent”
Arthur Rimbaud
(1854–1891) French Decadent and Symbolist poet
Source: A Season in Hell/The Drunken Boat
Pierre Joseph Proudhon
(1809–1865) French politician, mutualist philosopher, economist, and socialist
“There is no point in using the word 'impossible' to describe something that has clearly happened.”
Source: Dirk Gently's Holistic Detective Agency
“Wilderness. The word itself is music.”
Source: Desert Solitaire
“Writing cannot express all words, words cannot encompass all ideas.”
Confucius
(-551–-479 BC) Chinese teacher, editor, politician, and philosopher
Anne Frank
(1929–1945) victim of the Holocaust and author of a diary
Source: The Diary of a Young Girl
Temple Grandin
(1947) USA-american doctor of animal science, author, and autism activist
Source: Thinking in Pictures: My Life with Autism
“Who can know from the word goodbye what kind of parting is in store for us.”
Source: The Ministry of Utmost Happiness
“Once positioned on their(children's) lips,
even the scariest of words
come out as a melodious lisp.”
Suman Pokhrel
(1967) Nepali poet, lyricist, playwright, translator and artist
<span class="plainlinks"> Children http://www.occupypoetry.net/children_1/</span>
From Poetry
Suman Pokhrel
(1967) Nepali poet, lyricist, playwright, translator and artist
<span class="plainlinks"> Foreword, 'Tales of Transformation: English Translation of Tagore's Chitrangada and Chandalika', Lopamudra Banerjee, (2018). https://www.amazon.co.uk/dp/B07DQPD8F4/</span>
From Prose
“In influencing write-ups, words seem to move despite residing still on paper.”
Suman Pokhrel
(1967) Nepali poet, lyricist, playwright, translator and artist
<span class="plainlinks"> Foreword, 'Tales of Transformation: English Translation of Tagore's Chitrangada and Chandalika', Lopamudra Banerjee, (2018). https://www.amazon.co.uk/dp/B07DQPD8F4/</span>
From Prose
Frédéric Chopin
(1810–1849) Polish composer
As quoted in Chopin's Letter.
Source: Chopin's Letter (1988) by Henryk Opieński,E. L. Voynich, p. 4