Quotes about wording
page 34

Rousas John Rushdoony photo
David Berg photo
Ward Cunningham photo
George Gordon Byron photo

“No words suffice the secret soul to show,
For truth denies all eloquence to woe.”

George Gordon Byron (1788–1824) English poet and a leading figure in the Romantic movement

Canto III, stanza 22.
The Corsair (1814)

Christian Scriver photo
Herbert Hoover photo
Warren Farrell photo

“Even allegedly gender-neutral words like “sexist” imply slights only against women.”

Warren Farrell (1943) author, spokesperson, expert witness, political candidate

Women Can't Hear What Men Don't Say (2000)

“True emotions and sincere words never perish. The great heart of humanity gladly receives and embalms every true utterance of the humblest of its offspring.”

Elias Lyman Magoon (1810–1886) American minister

Source: Dictionary of Burning Words of Brilliant Writers (1895), P. 554.

Tanith Lee photo
Billy Joel photo

“Honesty is such a lonely word
Everyone is so untrue
Honesty is hardly ever heard
And mostly what I need from you.”

Billy Joel (1949) American singer-songwriter and pianist

Honesty.
Song lyrics, 52nd Street (1978)

Akira Ifukube photo
Henry Adams photo

“Never esteem anything as of advantage to you that will make you break your word or lose your self-respect.”

Henry Adams (1838–1918) journalist, historian, academic, novelist

Marcus Aurelius, Meditations, iii. 7
Misattributed

William Westmoreland photo

“The steel worker on the girder
Learned not to look down, and does his work
And there are words we have learned
Not to look at,
Not to look for substance
Below them. But we are on the verge
Of vertigo.”

George Oppen (1908–1984) American poet

"The Building of the Skyscraper" st. 1, 1965; Collected Poems of George Oppen", New Directions, 1976, ISBN 0-811-20615-7

Jennifer Beals photo
Leonid Kantorovich photo
Karl Wilhelm Friedrich Schlegel photo

“At the words “his philosophy, my philosophy,” one is always reminded of that line in Nathan: … “What kind of God is it who belongs to a man?””

Karl Wilhelm Friedrich Schlegel (1772–1829) German poet, critic and scholar

Bei den Ausdrücken, „Seine Philosophie”, „Meine Philosophie”, erinnert man sich immer an die Worte im Nathan: „Wem eignet Gott? Was ist das für ein Gott, der einem Menschen eignet?”
Lucinde and the Fragments, P. Firchow, trans. (1991) § 99, reference is to Lessing, Nathan der Weise

“Words as to the inner emotions do not come readily to me, for I have led an isolated life mentally and spiritually.”

Flora Thompson (1876–1947) English author and poet

Letter in a private collection quoted in Gillian Lindsay - The Story of the Lark Rise Writer 1990 ISBN 9781873855539
Literary Observations

James K. Morrow photo

“Zolmec,” said Nazra, “has always taught that the greatest words are ‘I could very well be wrong.’”

James K. Morrow (1947) (1947-) science fiction author

Source: The Wine of Violence (1981), Chapter 15 (p. 185)

Sören Kierkegaard photo

“But it never occurred to him to want to be a philosopher, or dedicate himself to Speculation; he was still too fickle for that. True, he was not drawn now to one thing and now to another – thinking was and remained his passion – but he still lacked the self-discipline required for acquiring a deeper coherence. Both the significant and the insignificant attracted him equally as points of departure for his pursuits; the result was not of great consequence – only the movements of thought as such interested him. Sometimes he noticed that he reached one and the same conclusion from quite different starting points, but this did not in any deeper sense engage his attention. His delight was always just to be pressing on; wherever he suspected a labyrinth, he had to find the way. Once he had started, nothing could bring him to a halt. If he found the going difficult and became tired of it before he ought, he would adopt a very simple remedy – he would shut himself up in his room, make everything as festive as possible, and then say loudly and clearly: I will do it. He had learned from his father that one can do what one wills, and his father’s life had not discredited this theory. Experiencing this had given Johannes indescribable pride; that there could be something one could not do when one willed it was unbearable to him. But his pride did not in the least indicate weakness of will, for when he had uttered these energetic words he was ready for anything; he then had a still higher goal – to penetrate the intricacies of the problem by force of will. This again was an adventure that inspired him. Indeed his life was in this way always adventurous. He needed no woods and wanderings for his adventures, but only what he possessed – a little room with one window.”

Sören Kierkegaard (1813–1855) Danish philosopher and theologian, founder of Existentialism

Johannes Climacus p. 22-23
1840s, Johannes Climacus (1841)

Jay Leiderman photo

“Investigators like to wave around the word ‘gang.’ They use it to strike fear in the heart of the community. It tends to also involve a lot of puffery and allegations that maybe perhaps aren’t 100 percent solid.”

Jay Leiderman (1971) lawyer

As said in a Ventura County Star article about a Mexican Mafia Case Leiderman was defending. http://www.vcstar.com/news/one-man-led-large-prison-crime-ring-in-ventura
Variant: Investigators like to wave around the word "gang". They use it to strike fear in the heart of the community. It tends to also involve a lot of puffery and allegations that maybe perhaps aren't 100 percent solid.

John Angell James photo
Samuel Taylor Coleridge photo
Wassily Kandinsky photo
Leszek Kolakowski photo

“Lenin’ s article of 1905, "Party Organization and Party Literature", was used for decades, and is still used, to justify ideologically the enslavement of the written word in Russia. It has been argued that it refers only to political literature, but this is not so: it relates to every kind of writing. It contains the words: "Down with non-partisan writers! Down with literary supermen! Literature must become part of the common cause of the proletariat, ‘ a cog and a screw’ of one single great Social Democratic mechanism set in motion by the entire politically conscious vanguard of the entire working class" (Works, vol. 10, p. 45). For the benefit of "hysterical intellectuals" who deplore this seemingly bureaucratic attitude, Lenin explains that there can be no mechanical levelling in the field of literature; there must be room for personal initiative, imagination, etc.; none the less, literary work must be part of the party’ s work and controlled by the party. This, of course, was written during the fight for "hourgeois democracy", on the assumption that Russia would in due course enjoy freedom of speech but that literary members of the party would have to display party-mindedness in their writings; as in other cases, the obligation would become general when the party controlled the apparatus of state coercion.”

Leszek Kolakowski (1927–2009) Philosopher, historian of ideas

pg. 515
Main Currents Of Marxism (1978), Three Volume edition, Volume II, The Golden Age

Evelyn Waugh photo
Fritjof Capra photo
Ben Croshaw photo
André Breton photo

“Oneiric values have definitely won out over the others, and I maintain that anyone who still refuses to see, for instance, a horse galloping on a tomato, must be an idiot. A tomato is also a child's balloon - Surrealism, again, having suppressed the word "like."”

André Breton (1896–1966) French writer

https://books.google.co.uk/books?id=baKRHNX7eo0C&pg=PA43#v=onepage&q&f=false
from: Point du Jour (Break of Day; 1934)
Breton's quote is often misquoted as The man who can't visualize a horse galloping on a tomato is an idiot.
after 1930

Christopher Hitchens photo
Frank Herbert photo

“Ecology is a dirty seven-letter word to many people. They are like heavy sleepers refusing to be aroused. "Leave me alone! It's not time to get up yet!"”

Frank Herbert (1920–1986) American writer

"Introduction" to New World or No World (1970)
General sources

Kage Baker photo
Hermann Hesse photo
Oliver Wendell Holmes photo
Dennis Lehane photo
Northrop Frye photo

“The operations of the human mind are also controlled by words of power, formulas that become a focus of mental activity.”

Northrop Frye (1912–1991) Canadian literary critic and literary theorist

Source: "Quotes", The Great Code: The Bible and Literature (1982), Chapter One, p. 7

“Not a thing nor words, can ever compare to the smile of yours”

Ritsuko Okazaki (1959–2004) Japanese singer

笑顔にはかなわない(egao ni wa kanawanai), Life is Lovely
Lyrics

Jim Butcher photo
Agatha Christie photo
Amy Hempel photo
Leo Tolstoy photo
Alan Blinder photo
Henry Ford photo

“Through all the years that I have been in business I have never yet found our business bad as a result of any outside force. It has always been due to some defect in our own company, and whenever we located and repaired that defect our business became good again - regardless of what anyone else might be doing. And it will always be found that this country has nationally bad business when business men are drifting, and that business is good when men take hold of their own affairs, put leadership into them, and push forward in spite of obstacles. Only disaster can result when the fundamental principles of business are disregarded and what looks like the easiest way is taken. These fundamentals, as I see them, are:
(1) To make an ever increasingly large quantity of goods of the best possible quality, to make them in the best and most economical fashion, and to force them out onto the market.
(2) To strive always for higher quality and lower prices as well as lower costs.
(3) To raise wages gradually but continuously B and never to cut them.
(4) To get the goods to the consumer in the most economical manner so that the benefits of low cost production may reach him.
These fundamentals are all summed up in the single word 'service'… The service starts with discovering what people need and then supplying that need according to the principles that have just been given.”

Henry Ford (1863–1947) American industrialist

Henry Ford in: Justus George Frederick (1930), A Philosophy of Production: A Symposium, p. 32; as cited in: Morgen Witzel (2003) Fifty Key Figures in Management. p. 196

Wassily Kandinsky photo

“First I will make different color tests: I will study the dark – deep blue, deep violet, deep dirty green, etc. Often I see the colors before my eyes. Sometimes I imitate with my lips the deep sounds of the trumpet – then I see various deep mixtures which the word is uncapable od conceiving and which the palette can only feebly reproduce.”

Wassily Kandinsky (1866–1944) Russian painter

Quote in Kandinsky's letter to Gabriele Münter, 1915; as cited in Schönberg and Kandinsky: An Historic Encounter, by Klaus Kropfinger; edited by Konrad Boehmer; published by Routledge (imprint of Taylor & Francis, an informal company), 2003, p. 16 note 54
1910 - 1915

“The Netherlands is a sociable land where people respect each other. We fight each other with words, not with bullets.”

RTV Rijnmond De moord op Pim Fortuyn http://www.rijnmond.nl/Homepage/Nieuws?view=/News%2FPagina_items%2Fdossiers%2FDe%20moord%20op%20Pim%20Fortuyn, Biografie Pim Fortuyn auf Google Sites http://sites.google.com/site/superlutser/biopim

Babe Ruth photo

“Pitchers—real pitchers— know that their job isn't so much to keep opposing batsmen from hitting as it is to make them hit it at someone. The trouble with most kid pitchers is that they forget there are eight other men on the team to help them. They just blunder ahead, putting everything they have on every pitch and trying to carry the weight of the whole game on their shoulders. The result is that they tire out and go bad along in the middle of the game, and then the wise old heads have to hurry out and rescue them. I've seen a lot of young fellows come up, and they all had the same trouble. Take Lefty Grove over at Philadelphia, for instance. There isn't a pitcher in the league who has more speed or stuff than Lefty. He can do things with a baseball that make you dizzy. But when he first came into the league he seemed to think that he had to strike out every batter as he came up. The result was he'd go along great for five or six innings, and them blow. And he's just now learning to conserve his strength. In other words, he's learning that a little exercise of the noodle will save a lot of wear and tear on his arm.”

Babe Ruth (1895–1948) American baseball player

"Chapter III," Babe Ruth's Own Book of Baseball (1928), pp. 32-33; reprinted as "Babe Ruth's Own Story — Chapter III: Pitching the Keynote of Defense; The Pitcher's Job; Why Young Hurlers Fail," https://news.google.com/newspapers?id=r0sbAAAAIBAJ&sjid=J0sEAAAAIBAJ&pg=6011%2C3899916 in The Pittsburgh Press (December 23, 1928), p. 52

Jeremy Corbyn photo

“This is my sixth attempt to introduce the Bill with the support of hon. Members and pensioner organisations all over Britain…Many statistics show the condition of elderly people. When the Social Security Act 1988 abolished supplementary benefit and what went with it, 30 per cent. of Britain's retired population were living on or below supplementary benefit levels. Despite the Government's claim that many elderly people are quite wealthy, at that time only 39 per cent. lived more than 140 per cent. above the level of supplementary benefit. In other words, at least 60 per cent. of Britain's elderly people live at a poor level, and 30 per cent. of them live below the poverty line. That is a scandal and the House should draw attention to it and enact my Bill to improve that situation…The Bill is a seven-point plan which, if carried into law, would change the face of Britain and eliminate poverty among the elderly… Britain is the seventh richest country in the world. It is a disgrace that so many elderly people die alone and in misery through hypothermia, not for lack of resources to provide for them, but for the lack of political will to distribute those resources to ensure that pensioners are well cared for and can live in decency in their retirement.”

Jeremy Corbyn (1949) British Labour Party politician

Speech http://hansard.millbanksystems.com/commons/1989/jan/18/elimination-of-poverty-in-retirement in the House of Commons (18 January 1989).
1980s

Martin Buber photo
Marie-Louise von Franz photo
Jacob Bronowski photo

“The Principle of Uncertainty is a bad name. In science, or outside of it, we are not uncertain; our knowledge is merely confined, within a certain tolerance. We should call it the Principle of Tolerance. And I propose that name in two senses. First, in the engineering sense: Science has progressed, step by step, the most successful enterprise in the ascent of man, because it has understood that the exchange of information between man and nature, and man and man, can only take place with a certain tolerance. But second, I also use the word, passionately, about the real world. All knowledge – all information between human beings – can only be exchanged within a play of tolerance. And that is true whether the exchange is in science, or in literature, or in religion, or in politics, or in any form of thought that aspires to dogma. It's a major tragedy of my lifetime and yours that scientists were refining, to the most exquisite precision, the Principle of Tolerance – and turning their backs on the fact that all around them, tolerance was crashing to the ground beyond repair. The Principle of Uncertainty or, in my phrase, the Principle of Tolerance, fixed once for all the realization that all knowledge is limited. It is an irony of history that at the very time when this was being worked out, there should rise, under Hitler in Germany and other tyrants elsewhere, a counter-conception: a principle of monstrous certainty. When the future looks back on the 1930's, it will think of them as a crucial confrontation of culture as I have been expounding it – the ascent of man against the throwback to the despots' belief that they have absolute certainty.”

Episode 11: "Knowledge or Certainty"
The Ascent of Man (1973)

Koenraad Elst photo

“In Swami Dayananda's view, the term Arya was not coterminous with the term Hindu. The classical meaning of the word Arya is 'noble'. It is used as an honorific term of address, used in addressing the honoured ones in ancient Indian parlance. The term Hindu is reluctantly accepted as a descriptive term for the contemporary Hindu society and all its varied beliefs and practices, while the term Arya is normative and designates Hinduism as it ought to be…. Elsewhere in Hindu society, 'Arya' was and is considered a synonym for 'Hindu', except that it may be broader, viz. by unambiguously including Buddhism and Jainism. Thus, the Constitution of the 'independent, indivisible and sovereign monarchical Hindu kingdom' (Art.3:1) of Nepal take care to include the Buddhist minority by ordaining the king to uphold 'Aryan culture and Hindu religion' (Art.20: 1)…. The Arya Samaj's misgivings about the term Hindu already arose in tempore non suspecto, long before it became a dirty Word under Jawaharlal Nehru and a cause of legal disadvantage under the 1950 Constitution. Swami Dayananda Saraswati rightly objected that the term had been given by foreigners (who, moreover, gave all kinds of derogatory meanings to it) and considered that dependence on an exonym is a bit sub-standard for a highly literate and self-expressive civilization. This argument retains a certain validity: the self-identification of Hindus as 'Hindu' can never be more than a second-best option. On the other hand, it is the most practical choice in the short run, and most Hindus don't seem to pine for an alternative.”

Koenraad Elst (1959) orientalist, writer

2000s, Who is a Hindu, (2001)

Brené Brown photo

“Shame hates to have words wrapped around it. If we talk about it, it loses its grip on us.”

Brené Brown (1965) US writer and professor

University of Houston, Pride Stories http://www.uh.edu/pride-stories/Brene-Brown/Brene-Brown-Story%20/index.php

James K. Morrow photo

““Ah, yes, the spiritual realm.” In those days “spiritual” was my least favorite word. It still is.”

James K. Morrow (1947) (1947-) science fiction author

Source: The Philosopher's Apprentice (2008), Chapter 7 (p. 141)

Victor Villaseñor photo

“It was from this day on that I began to notice a real difference between our vaqueros on the ranch from Mexico and the gringo cowboys. The American cowboys always seemed so ready to act rough and tough, wanting to “break” the horse, cow, or goat or anything else. Where, on the other hand, our vaqueros—who used the word “amanzar,” meaning to make “tame,” for dealing with horses—had a whole different attitude towards everything. To “break” a horse, for the cowboys, actually, really meant to take a green, untrained horse and rope him, knock him down, saddle him while he fought to get loose, then mount him as he got up on all four legs, and ride the living hell out of the horse until you tired him out, taught him who was boss, and “broke” his spirit. To “amanzar” a horse, on the other hand, was a whole other approach that took weeks of grooming, petting, and leading the green horse around in the afternoon with a couple of well-trained horses. Then, after about a month, you began to put a saddle on the horse and tie him up in shade in the afternoon for a couple of hours until, finally, the saddle felt like just a natural part of him. Then, and only then, did a person finally mount the horse, petting and sweet-talking him the whole time, and once more the green horse was taken on a walk between two well-trained horses.”

Victor Villaseñor (1940) American writer

Burro Genius: A Memoir (2004)

Cat Stevens photo
Jeremy Taylor photo
Gore Vidal photo
Imre Kertész photo

“Talking is not enough; words don’t clarify anything. I’ll have to hit upon something, but what?”

Imre Kertész (1929–2016) Hungarian writer

Source: Detective Story (2008), p. 49.

Pearl S.  Buck photo

“Euthanasia is a long, smooth-sounding word, and it conceals its danger as long, smooth words do, but the danger is there, nevertheless.”

Pearl S. Buck (1892–1973) American writer

The Child Who Never Grew (1950), Ch. 2

Thomas Little Heath photo
Émile Durkheim photo
Bernard Membe photo
Bram van Velde photo

“A painter is someone who can't use words. His only escape is to be a seer.”

Bram van Velde (1895–1981) Dutch painter

1960's, Conversations with Samuel Beckett and Bram van Velde' (1965 - 1969)

Alexander Bogdanov photo
George Chakiris photo
George Chapman photo

“Let no man value at a little price
A virtuous woman's counsel; her wing'd spirit
Is feather'd oftentimes with heavenly words.”

The Gentleman Usher, Act IV, scene i; reported in Bartlett's Familiar Quotations, 10th ed. (1919).

Edward R. Murrow photo
Anthony Burgess photo
T.S. Eliot photo

“Let these words answer
For what is done, not to be done again
May the judgement not be too heavy upon us”

T.S. Eliot (1888–1965) 20th century English author

Ash-Wednesday (1930)

Bob Dylan photo
Nicholas Wade photo
William Trufant Foster photo
Anne Brontë photo

“It is deeds not words which must purchase my affection and esteem.”

Source: The Tenant of Wildfell Hall (1848), Ch. XLVIII : Further Intelligence; Helen to Arthur

“Rehearsing a play is making the word flesh. Publishing a play is reversing the process.”

Equus (Harmondsworth: Penguin, [1973] 1984), p. 8.

Peter Hitchens photo
Jerry Coyne photo
Sören Kierkegaard photo
Brian Wilson photo

“Being called a musical genius was a cross to bear. Genius is a big word. But if you have to live up to something, you might as well live up to that.”

Brian Wilson (1942) American musician, singer, songwriter and record producer

"Brian Wilson: God Only Knows" http://www.rollingstone.com/music/features/god-only-knows-19880811 in Rolling Stone (11 August 1988)

Bruce Fairchild Barton photo

“He was in fact an adman: persuading, recruiting followers, finding the right words to arouse interest and create desires, in short exemplifying all the principles of modern salesmanship.”

Bruce Fairchild Barton (1886–1967) American author, politician and advertising executive

Stephen R. Fox, summarizing Barton's beliefs regarding Jesus, in The Mirror Makers : A History of American Advertising and Its Creators (1984); this has been quoted as if it were a statement of Barton's.
Misattributed

Henry George photo

“Men must have rights before they can have equal rights. Each man has a right to use the world because he is here and wants to use the world. The equality of this right is merely a limitation arising from the presence of others with like rights. Society, in other words, does not grant, and cannot equitably withhold from any individual, the right to the use of land. That right exists before society and independently of society, belonging at birth to each individual, and ceasing only with his death.”

Henry George (1839–1897) American economist

Part I : Declaration, Ch. IV : Mr. Spencer's Confusion as to Rights
A Perplexed Philosopher (1892)
Context: Men must have rights before they can have equal rights. Each man has a right to use the world because he is here and wants to use the world. The equality of this right is merely a limitation arising from the presence of others with like rights. Society, in other words, does not grant, and cannot equitably withhold from any individual, the right to the use of land. That right exists before society and independently of society, belonging at birth to each individual, and ceasing only with his death. Society itself has no original right to the use of land. What right it has with regard to the use of land is simply that which is derived from and is necessary to the determination of the rights of the individuals who compose it. That is to say, the function of society with regard to the use of land only begins where individual rights clash, and is to secure equality between these clashing rights of individuals.

“"The language spoken by these early Macedonians has become a controversial issue in modern times. It seems not to have been so in antiquity. As we have seen, Hesiod made Magnes and Macedon first cousins of the Hellenes, and he therefore regarded them as speakers of a dialect (or dialects) of the Greek language. That he was correct in the case of the Magnetes has been proved by the discovery of early inscriptions in an Aeolic dialect in their area of eastern Thessaly. Then, late in the fifth century a Greek historian, Hellanicus, who visited the court of Macedonia, made the father of Macedon not Zeus but Aeolus, a thing which he could not have done unless he knew that the Macedonians were speaking an Aeolic dialect of Greek. A remarkable confirmation of their Greek speech comes from the Persians, who occupied Macedonia as part of their conquests in Europe c.510-480. […] Disagreements over this issue have developed for various reasons. In the second half of the fifth century Thucydides regarded the semi-nomadic, armed northerners of Epirus and western Macedonia as "barbarians", and he called them such in his history of events in 429 and 423. The word was understood by some scholars to mean "non-Greek-speakers" rather than "savages." They were shown to be mistaken in 1956, when inscriptions of 370-68, containing lists of Greek personal names and recording in the Greek language some acts of the Molossians, were found at Dodona in Epirus. This discovery proved beyond dispute that one of Thucydides "barbarian" tribes" of Epirus, the Molossians, was speaking Greek at the time of which he was writing. Demosthenes too called the Macedonians "barbarians" in the 340s. That this was merely a term of abuse has been proved recently by the discovery at Aegae (Vergina) of seventy-four Greek names and one Thracian name on funerary headstones inscribed in Greek letters.”

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

"The Miracle That Was Macedonia", Palgrave Macmillan (September 1991)

Trevor Baylis photo
Alberto Manguel photo

“Sanskrit is constructed like geometry and follows a rigorous logic. It is theoretically possible to explain the meaning of the words according to the combined sense of the relative letters, syllables and roots. Sanskrit has no meanings by connotations and consequently does not age. Panini's language is in no way different from that of Hindu scholars conferring in Sanskrit today.”

Pāṇini ancient Sanskrit grammarian

Alain Danielou in: Virtue, Success, Pleasure, and Liberation: The Four Aims of Life in the Tradition of Ancient India https://books.google.co.in/books?id=IMSngEmfdS0C&pg=PA17, Inner Traditions / Bear & Co, 1 August 1993 , p. 17.

Marc Randazza photo
Frederick Brotherton Meyer photo
Rachel Maddow photo
Yuvan Shankar Raja photo
Robert Frost photo