Quotes about wording
page 36

Will Self photo
John Byrne photo
Prince photo
Ray Comfort photo
William H. McNeill photo

“The rise of Islam offers perhaps the most impressive example in world history of the power of words to alter human behavior in sudden, surprising ways.”

William H. McNeill (1917–2016) Canadian historian

Source: Keeping Together in Time (1995), Ch. 4: Religious Ceremonies.

Steve Blank photo

“In Silicon Valley, we have a special word for a failed entrepreneur – it’s called experienced.”

Steve Blank (1953) American businessman

University of Minnesota commencement speech, FounderLY http://www.founderly.com/2013/05/university-of-minnesota-commencement-speech. May 06, 2013.

Philip Schaff photo
John Ruskin photo
Anastacia photo

“I'm pop-corn
I'm a hell storm
Yeah, I'm in the hands of faith
I’m so bad words
Now what you heard?”

Anastacia (1968) American singer-songwriter

Dark White Girl
Resurrection (2014)

Thomas Fuller (writer) photo
Jack Kerouac photo
Czeslaw Milosz photo

“I swear, there is in me no wizardry of word.
I speak to you with silence like a cloud or a tree.”

Czeslaw Milosz (1911–2004) Polish, poet, diplomat, prosaist, writer, and translator

Przysięgam, nie ma we mnie czarodziejstwa słów.
Mówię do ciebie milcząc, jak obłok czy drzewo.
"Dedication" (1945); quoted in Conversant Essays : Contemporary Poets on Poetry (1990) edited by James McCorkle, p. 69

Robert Spencer photo
Camille Paglia photo
Halldór Laxness photo
Douglas Hofstadter photo
Dylan Moran photo
Tarkan photo

“With every word unspoken each moment comes undone.”

Tarkan (1972) Turkish singer

Over
Come Closer (2006)

Guity Novin photo
Arundhati Roy photo
Gore Vidal photo
John F. Kennedy photo
W. S. Gilbert photo
Konrad Heiden photo

“The Nazi party had been too hasty in incorporating the word ‘Socialist’ in its title, Hitler indeed wished it to be ‘Social Revolutionary.”

Konrad Heiden (1901–1966) German journalist and historian

Source: A History of National Socialism (1934), p. 85

Jonathan Swift photo

“Sharp's the word with her.”

Jonathan Swift (1667–1745) Anglo-Irish satirist, essayist, and poet

Polite Conversation (1738), Dialogue 3

William Joyce photo

“And therefore I say to you, in these last words, you may not hear from me again for a few months. I say, Es lebe Deutschland! Heil Hitler, and farewell.”

William Joyce (1906–1946) British fascist and propaganda broadcaster

End of Joyce's last broadcast (His voice heavily slurred due to an apparent state of intoxication)

Don Willett photo
Robert Fisk photo

“Terrorism' is a word that has become a plague on our vocabulary, the excuse and reason and moral permit for state-sponsored violence - our violence - which is now used on the innocent of the Middle East ever more outrageously and promiscuously. Terrorism, terrorism, terrorism. It has become a full stop, a punctuation mark, a phrase, a speech, a sermon, the be-all and end-all of everything that we must hate in order to ignore injustice and occupation and murder on a mass scale. Terror, terror, terror, terror. It is a sonata, a symphony, an orchestra tuned to every television and radio station and news agency report, the soap-opera of the Devil, served up on prime-time or distilled in wearyingly dull and mendacious form by the right-wing 'commentators' of the America east coast or the Jerusalem Post or the intellectuals of Europe. Strike against Terror. Victory over Terror. War on Terror. Everlasting War on Terror. Rarely in history have soldiers and journalists and presidents and kings aligned themselves in such thoughtless, unquestioning ranks. In August 1914, the soldiers thought they would be home by Christmas. Today, we are fighting for ever. The war is eternal. The enemy is eternal, his face changing on our screens. Once he lived in Cairo and sported a moustache and nationalised the Suez Canal. Then he lived in Tripoli and wore a ridiculous military uniform and helped the IRA and bombed American bars in Berlin. Then he wore a Muslim Imam's gown and ate yoghurt in Tehran and planned Islamic revolution. Then he wore a white gown and lived in a cave in Afghanistan and then he wore another silly moustache and resided in a series of palaces around Baghdad. Terror, terror, terror. Finally, he wore a kuffiah headdress and outdated Soviet-style military fatigues, his name was Yassir Arafat, and he was the master of world terror and then a super-statesman and then again, a master of terror, linked by Israeli enemies to the terror-Meister of them all, the one who lived in the Afghan cave.”

Robert Fisk (1946) English writer and journalist

The Great War for Civilization (2005)

Humberto Maturana photo
Kent Hovind photo
Plutarch photo

“Aristodemus, a friend of Antigonus, supposed to be a cook's son, advised him to moderate his gifts and expenses. "Thy words," said he, "Aristodemus, smell of the apron."”

Plutarch (46–127) ancient Greek historian and philosopher

44 Antigonus I
Apophthegms of Kings and Great Commanders

Henry Alford photo

“The Holy Spirit of God dwelling in us, knowing our wants better than we, Himself pleads in our prayers, raising us to higher and holier desires than we can express in words, which can only find utterance in sighings and aspirations.”

Henry Alford (1810–1871) English churchman, theologian, textual critic, scholar, poet, hymnodist, and writer

The New Testament for English Readers (1865), Romans 8:26, p. 73, footnote.

Jacob Bronowski photo
Mao Zedong photo
Tim Berners-Lee photo
Robert Burns photo
Kenneth Arrow photo
Northrop Frye photo

“[Students] have to learn that ideas do not exist until they have been incorporated into words. Until that point you don’t know whether you are pregnant or just have gas on the stomach.”

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

Source: "Quotes", Interviews with Northrop Frye (2008), p. 746

Edward FitzGerald photo
Yasunari Kawabata photo
Aidan Nichols photo
John Buchan photo

“The best prayers have often more groans than words.”

John Buchan (1875–1940) British politician

This has also been attributed to Buchan, but is again from John Bunyan, Discourse on Prayer.
Misattributed

Noam Chomsky photo
Chris Hedges photo
Brion Gysin photo
Pierre Bayle photo

“If the Multiplicity of Religions prejudices the State, it proceeds from their not bearing with one another but on the contrary endeavouring each to crush and destroy the other by methods of Persecution. In a word, all the Mischief arises not from Toleration, but from the want of it.”

Pierre Bayle (1647–1706) French philosopher and writer

Quoted in: Joseph LoConte, "The Golden Rule of Toleration" http://www.christianitytoday.com/ch/thepastinthepresent/historymatters/goldenrule.html, Christianity Today, Accessed 6 March 2011

Jay Nordlinger photo

“I suppose I am one: an activist — for animals and a vegan lifestyle. I hear that word, however, and look around to see if someone is indeed referring to me.”

Victoria Moran (1950) American writer

“Veg and the City: My Journey to Ethical Veganism,” in HuffingtonPost.com (28 July 2010) http://www.huffingtonpost.com/victoria-moran/ethical-veganism_b_659640.html.

Maimónides photo
Joshua Reynolds photo

“The art of seeing Nature, or in other words, the art of using Models, is in reality the great object, the point to which all our studies are directed.”

Joshua Reynolds (1723–1792) English painter, specialising in portraits

Discourse no. 12; vol. 2, p. 104.
Discourses on Art

Vincent Van Gogh photo
Joseph Lewis photo
Anne Brontë photo
Charles Mingus photo
U.G. Krishnamurti photo

“My teaching, if that is the word you want to use, has no copyright. You are free to reproduce, distribute, interpret, misinterpret, distort, garble, do what you like, even claim authorship, without my consent or the permission of anybody.”

U.G. Krishnamurti (1918–2007) Indian philosopher

Copyright release found in this and several other publications of his conversations (note: copyright restrictions apply)
The Mystique of Enlightenment (1982)

Mary McCarthy photo

“Every word she writes is a lie, including and and the.”

Mary McCarthy (1912–1989) American writer

Comment about Lillian Hellman in a televised interview (1979) on The Dick Cavett Show; this prompted a defamation suit against McCarthy which was dropped after Hellman's death: "If someone had told me, don't say anything about Lillian Hellman because she'll sue you, it wouldn't have stopped me. It might have spurred me on. I didn't want her to die. I wanted her to lose in court. I wanted her around for that."

Brigham Young photo
Don DeLillo photo
Paul Weyrich photo

“I believe that we probably have lost the culture war. That doesn't mean the war is not going to continue, and that it isn't going to be fought on other fronts. But in terms of society in general, we have lost. This is why, even when we win in politics, our victories fail to translate into the kind of policies we believe are important.Therefore, what seems to me a legitimate strategy for us to follow is to look at ways to separate ourselves from the institutions that have been captured by the ideology of Political Correctness, or by other enemies of our traditional culture. I would point out to you that the word "holy" means "set apart," and that it is not against our tradition to be, in fact, "set apart." You can look in the Old Testament, you can look at Christian history. You will see that there were times when those who had our beliefs were definitely in the minority and it was a band of hardy monks who preserved the culture while the surrounding society disintegrated.What I mean by separation is, for example, what the homeschoolers have done. Faced with public school systems that no longer educate but instead "condition" students with the attitudes demanded by Political Correctness, they have seceded. They have separated themselves from public schools and have created new institutions, new schools, in their homes.”

Paul Weyrich (1942–2008) American political activist

Letter to Amy Ridenour, National Center for Public Policy Research http://www.nationalcenter.org/Weyrich299.html (1999-02-16)

L. Ron Hubbard photo
John Romilly, 1st Baron Romilly photo

“There is no magic in words.”

John Romilly, 1st Baron Romilly (1802–1874) English Whig politician and judge

Lord v. Jeffkins (1865), 35 Beav. 16.

Bhakti Tirtha Swami photo
Johann Georg Hamann photo

“Let us assume that we invited an unknown person to a game of cards. If this person answered us, “I don’t play,” we would either interpret this to mean that he did not understand the game, or that he had an aversion to it which arose from economic, ethical, or other reasons. Let us imagine, however, that an honorable man, who was known to possess every possible skill in the game, and who was well versed in its rules and its forbidden tricks, but who could like a game and participate in it only when it was an innocent pastime, were invited into a company of clever swindlers, who were known as good players and to whom he was equal on both scores, to join them in a game. If he said, “I do not play,” we would have to join him in looking the people with whom he was talking straight in the face, and would be able to supplement his words as follows: “I don’t play, that is, with people such as you, who break the rules of the game, and rob it of its pleasure. If you offer to play a game, our mutual agreement, then, is that we recognize the capriciousness of chance as our master; and you call the science of your nimble fingers chance, and I must accept it as such, it I will, or run the risk of insulting you or choose the shame of imitating you.” … The opinion of Socrates can be summarized in these blunt words, when he said to the Sophists, the leaned men of his time, “I know nothing.””

Johann Georg Hamann (1730–1788) German philosopher

Therefore these words were a thorn in their eyes and a scourge on their backs.
Socratic Memorabilia, J. Flaherty, trans. (Baltimore: 1967), pp. 165-167.

Maneka Gandhi photo

“We are already into the crisis. It will accelerate in the next five years. There will come a time in the next 10 years when it will be irrelevant which party comes to power. The word democracy will be irrelevant when people rush to grab whatever available resources are left.”

Maneka Gandhi (1956) Indian politician and activist

On global warming, as quoted in "Maneka Gandhi on India and global warming" http://www.rediff.com/money/2007/may/14guest1.htm, Rediff (14 May 2007)
2001-2010

Scott Adams photo
Robert Rauschenberg photo

“I am sick of talking about What and Why I am doing. I have always believed that the WORK is the word. Action is seen less clearly through reason. There are no shortcuts to directness.”

Robert Rauschenberg (1925–2008) American artist

around 1965
Quote from Robert Rauschenberg, The early 1950s, Walter Hopps, Houston Fine Art Press, 1991
1960's

John Fletcher photo

“Deeds, not words.”

John Fletcher (1579–1625) English Jacobean playwright

The Lover's Progress (licensed 6 December 1623; revised 1634; published 1647), Act iii. Sc. 4. Compare: "Deeds, not words", Samuel Butler, Hudibras, part i, canto i, line 867.

William Jennings Bryan photo
Martin Heidegger photo
Julian of Norwich photo
Arun Shourie photo

“Furthermore, we are instructed, when we do come across instances of temple destruction, as in the case of Aurangzeb, we have to be circumspect in inferring what has happened and why…. the early monuments – like the Quwwat-ul-Islam mosque in Delhi – had to be built in ‘great haste’, we are instructed…Proclamation of political power, alone! And what about the religion which insists that religious faith is all, that the political cannot be separated from the religious? And the name: the Quwwat-ul-Islam mosque, the Might of Islam mosque? Of course, that must be taken to be mere genuflection! And notice: ‘available materials were assembled and incorporated’, they ‘clearly came from Hindu sources’ – may be the materials were just lying about; may be the temples had crumbled on their own earlier; may be the Hindus voluntarily broke their temples and donated the materials? No? After all, there is no proof they didn’t! And so, the word ‘plundered’ is repeatedly put within quotation marks!
In fact, there is more. The use of such materials – from Hindu temples – for constructing Islamic mosques is part of ‘a process of architectural definition and accommodation by local workmen essential to the further development of a South Asian architecture for Islamic use’. The primary responsibility thus becomes that of those ‘local workmen’ and their ‘accommodation’. Hence, features in the Qutb complex come to ‘demonstrate a creative response by architects and carvers to a new programme’. A mosque that has clearly used materials, including pillars, from Hindu temples, in which undeniably ‘in the fabric of the central dome, a lintel carved with Hindu deities has been turned around so that its images face into the rubble wall’ comes ‘not to fix the rule’. ‘Rather, it stands in contrast to the rapid exploration of collaborative and creative possibilities – architectural, decorative, and synthetic – found in less fortified contexts.’ Conclusions to the contrary have been ‘misevaluations’. We are making the error of ‘seeing salvaged pieces’ – what a good word that, ‘salvaged ’: the pieces were not obtained by breaking down temples; they were lying as rubble and would inevitably have disintegrated with the passage of time; instead they were ‘salvaged ’, and given the honour of becoming part of new, pious buildings – ‘seeing salvaged pieces where healthy collaborative creativity was producing new forms’.”

Arun Shourie (1941) Indian journalist and politician

Eminent Historians: Their Technology, Their Line, Their Fraud

Jerzy Neyman photo
William Wordsworth photo

“Babylon,
Learned and wise, hath perished utterly,
Nor leaves her speech one word to aid the sigh
That would lament her.”

William Wordsworth (1770–1850) English Romantic poet

Part I, No. 25 - Missions and Travels.
Ecclesiastical Sonnets (1821)

Margaret Thatcher photo
Karen Armstrong photo
Haruki Murakami photo
Robert T. Kiyosaki photo

“In other words, a majority of people let their lack of money stop them from making a deal.”

Robert T. Kiyosaki (1947) American finance author , investor

Rich Dad Poor Dad: What the Rich Teach Their Kids About Money-That the Poor and the Middle Class Do Not!

Ernesto Che Guevara photo
Mark Ames photo
Dorothy L. Sayers photo
John S. Bell photo
John Bunyan photo
Cory Booker photo
John Calvin photo
Larry Wall photo

“Perhaps they will have to outlaw sending random lists of words. fee fie foe foo”

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

[199710311916.LAA19760@wall.org, 1997]
Usenet postings, 1997

Margaret Chase Smith photo
William Bateson photo
Derren Brown photo
Lixion Avila photo

“Bertha HAS to weaken and begin to become extratropical…famous last words.”

Lixion Avila (1950) American meteorologist

On Hurricane Bertha in 2008 http://www.nhc.noaa.gov/archive/2008/al02/al022008.discus.065.shtml?