Quotes about wording
page 59

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Yaroslav Alexandrovich Evdokimov photo
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John Adams photo

“My friend, there is something very serious in this business. The Holy Ghost carries on the whole Christian system in this earth. Not a baptism, not a marriage, not a sacrament can be administered but by the Holy Ghost, Who is transmitted from age to age by laying the hands of the Bishop on the heads of candidates for the ministry.... There is no authority, civil or religious — there can be no legitimate government — but what is administered by this Holy Ghost. There can be no salvation without it — all without it is rebellion and perdition, or, in more orthodox words, damnation... Your prophecy, my dear friend, has not become history as yet. I have no resentment of animosity against the gentleman [Jefferson] and abhor the idea of blackening his character or transmitting him in odious colors to posterity. But I write with difficulty and am afraid of diffusing myself in too many correspondences. If I should receive a letter from him, however, I should not fail to acknowledge and answer it.”

John Adams (1735–1826) 2nd President of the United States

Adams as misquoted by David Barton, in "The Dream of Dr. Benjamin Rush & God's Hand in Reconciling John Adams and Thomas Jefferson" in WallBuilders (June 2008) http://www.wallbuilders.com/LIBissuesArticles.asp?id=10152; omitting many words, giving a very misleading impression that Adams (who did not believe in the Christian Trinity) is endorsing the viewpoint that a government must be administered by the Holy Ghost to be legitimate. Barton went on to use another version, substituting some of Adams' words with false ones:
Misattributed

Conrad Aiken photo

“Walk with me world, upon my right hand walk,
speak to me Babel, that I may strive to assemble
of all these syllables a single word
before the purpose of speech is gone.”

Conrad Aiken (1889–1973) American novelist and poet

"This image or another," The Nation (28 December 1932)

David Brin photo

“He managed to lie by implication while speaking words that were the literal truth, a skill he had grown good at, if not proud of.”

Source: The Postman (1985), Section 3, “Cincinnatus”, Chapter 5 (p. 200)

François de La Rochefoucauld photo
George Sutherland photo
William Morris photo

“To happy folk
All heaviest words no more of meaning bear
Than far-off bells saddening the Summer air.”

William Morris (1834–1896) author, designer, and craftsman

"The Hill of Venus".
The Earthly Paradise (1868-70)

Henri Fayol photo
Halldór Laxness photo
Charles Taze Russell photo
Francis Bacon photo

“Touching the secrets of the heart and the successions of time, doth make a just and sound difference between the manner of the exposition of the Scriptures and all other books. For it is an excellent observation which hath been made upon the answers of our Saviour Christ to many of the questions which were propounded to Him, how that they are impertinent to the state of the question demanded: the reason whereof is, because not being like man, which knows man’s thoughts by his words, but knowing man’s thoughts immediately, He never answered their words, but their thoughts. Much in the like manner it is with the Scriptures, which being written to the thoughts of men, and to the succession of all ages, with a foresight of all heresies, contradictions, differing estates of the Church, yea, and particularly of the elect, are not to be interpreted only according to the latitude of the proper sense of the place, and respectively towards that present occasion whereupon the words were uttered, or in precise congruity or contexture with the words before or after, or in contemplation of the principal scope of the place; but have in themselves, not only totally or collectively, but distributively in clauses and words, infinite springs and streams of doctrine to water the Church in every part. And therefore as the literal sense is, as it were, the main stream or river, so the moral sense chiefly, and sometimes the allegorical or typical, are they whereof the Church hath most use; not that I wish men to be bold in allegories, or indulgent or light in allusions: but that I do much condemn that interpretation of the Scripture which is only after the manner as men use to interpret a profane book.”

XXV. (17)
The Advancement of Learning (1605)

P. W. Botha photo

“I am sick and tired of the hollow parrot-cry of “Apartheid!” I’ve said many times that the word “Apartheid” means good neighbourliness.”

P. W. Botha (1916–2006) South African prime minister

As cited in Country of My Skull, Antjie Krog, Random House, p. 270

George Holmes Howison photo

“But Rizvi has summarized them in the following words from Waliullah’s magnum opus in Arabic, Hujjat-Allah al-Baligha: “According to Shah Wali-Allah the mark of the perfect implementation of the Sharia was the performance of jihad. There were people, said the Shah, who indulged in their lower nature by following their ancestral religion, ignoring the advice and commands of the Prophet Mohammed. If one chose to explain Islam to people like this it was to do them a disservice. Force, said the Shah, was the better course - Islam should be forced down their throats like bitter medicine to a child. This, however, was possible only if the leaders of the non-Muslim communities who failed to accept Islam were killed, the strength of the community was reduced, their property confiscated and a situation was created which led to their followers and descendants willingly accepting Islam. Another means of ensuring conversions was to prevent other religious communities from worshipping their own gods. Moreover, unfavourable discriminating laws should be imposed on non-Muslims in matters of rule of retaliation, compensation for manslaughter, and marriage and political matters. However, the proselytization programme of Shah Wali-Allah only included the leaders of the Hindu community. The low class of the infidels, according to him, were to be left alone to work in the fields and for paying jiziya. They like beasts of burden and agricultural livestock were to be kept in abject misery and despair.””

Shah Waliullah Dehlawi (1703–1762) Indian muslim scholar

S.A.A. Rizvi, Shah Wali-Allah and His Times, Canberra. 1980, p.285-6 Quoted from Goel, Sita Ram (1995). Muslim separatism: Causes and consequences. ISBN 9788185990262

Frances Wright photo
David Wood photo

“Philosophy is said to have taken the 'linguistic turn' in this century. One hundred years ago, a philosopher would think in terms of mind, spirit, experience, consciousness; now the by-word is language.”

David Wood (1946) British philosopher, born 1946

Source: Philosophy At The Limit (1990), Chapter 2, Metaphysics and Metaphor, p. 26

Nguyen Khanh photo
Charles Krauthammer photo
Boris Berezovsky photo
P.G. Wodehouse photo
Paula Modersohn-Becker photo

“Now it's almost as beautiful as Christmas [then Paula suddenly fell to the floor]…. What a pity! [her last words].”

Paula Modersohn-Becker (1876–1907) German artist

as quoted in: Paula Modersohn-Becker, the challenges of pregnancy and the weight of tradition, by Giorgina B. Piccoli and Scott L. Karakas; published in: 'Philosophy, Ethics, and Humanities in Medicine', 6 June 2011, p. 1; as quoted in: M. Bohlmann-Modersohn: Paula Modersohn-Becker: eine Biographie mit Briefen, Albrecht Knaus; Berlin 1995, p. 280
Paula had given birth to her (first) child, Mathilde, on 2 November 1907. Her sudden death, on 21 November 1907, due to thromboembolism, occurred almost immediately after she was allowed to leave her bed for the first time following her delivery; her biographers recount that she combed her hair, adorned it with red roses received as presents, and slowly walked to the living room, where her daughter was in her crib. Paula took the young daughter Mathilde (later called Tille) in her arms and fell down, suddenly.
1906 + 1907

Jiddu Krishnamurti photo

“The very word "sorrow" colours the fact of sorrow, the pain of it.”

Jiddu Krishnamurti (1895–1986) Indian spiritual philosopher

3rd Public Talk, Brockwood Park, UK (5 September 1981)
1980s

Marsden Hartley photo
Sandra Fluke photo
Antony Flew photo

“The term 'fundamentalist', which was coined in 1920, derives from the title of a series of tracts - The Fundamentals - published in the United States from 1910 to 1915. It has since been implicitly defined as meaning a person who believes that, since The Bible is the Word of God, every proposition in it must be true; a belief which, notoriously, is taken to commit fundamentalist Christians to defending the historicity of the accounts of the creation of the Universe given in the first two chapters of Genesis. On this understanding a fully believing Christian does not have to be fundamentalist. Instead it is both necessary and sufficient to accept the Apostles' and/or The Nicene Creed. In Islam, however, the situation is altogether different. For, whereas only a very small proportion of all the propositions contained in the Old and New Testaments are presented as statements made directly by God in any of the three persons of the Trinity, The Koran consists entirely and exclusively of what are alleged to be revelations from Allah (God). Therefore, with regard to The Koran, all Muslims must be as such fundamentalists; and anyone denying anything. asserted in The Koran ceases, ipso facto, to be properly accounted a Muslim. Those whom the media call fundamentalists would therefore better be described as revivalists. This conceptual truth not only places a tight limitation upon the possibilities of developmental change within Islam, as opposed to the tacit or open abandonment of one or more of its original particular claims, but also opens up the theoretical possibility of falsifying the Islamic system as a whole by presenting some known fact which is inconsistent with a Koranic assertion.”

Antony Flew (1923–2010) British analytic and evidentialist philosopher

Turning away from Mecca (The Salisbury Review, Spring 1996) quoted from Goel, Sita Ram (editor) (1998). Freedom of expression: Secular theocracy versus liberal democracy. https://web.archive.org/web/20171026023112/http://www.bharatvani.org:80/books/foe/index.htm

Percy Bysshe Shelley photo
Jean Paul Sartre photo

“The anti‐Semite has chosen hate because hate is a faith; at the outset he has chosen to devaluate words and reasons. How entirely at ease he feels as a result. How futile and frivolous discussions about the rights of the Jew appear to him. He has placed himself on other ground from the beginning. If out of courtesy he consents for a moment to defend his point of view, he lends himself but does not give himself. He tries simply to project his intuitive certainty onto the plane of discourse. I mentioned awhile back some remarks by anti‐Semites, all of them absurd: "I hate Jews because they make servants insubordinate, because a Jewish furrier robbed me, etc." Never believe that anti‐ Semites are completely unaware of the absurdity of their replies. They know that their remarks are frivolous, open to challenge. But they are amusing themselves, for it is their adversary who is obliged to use words responsibly, since he believes in words. The anti‐Semites have the right to play. They even like to play with discourse for, by giving ridiculous reasons, they discredit the seriousness of their interlocutors. They delight in acting in bad faith, since they seek not to persuade by sound argument but to intimidate and disconcert. If you press them too closely, they will abruptly fall silent, loftily indicating by some phrase that the time for argument is past. It is not that they are afraid of being convinced. They fear only to appear ridiculous or to prejudice by their embarrassment their hope of winning over some third person to their side.”

Jean Paul Sartre (1905–1980) French existentialist philosopher, playwright, novelist, screenwriter, political activist, biographer, and …

Pages 13-14
(1945)

James K. Morrow photo
Jaime Pressly photo

“The bourgeoisie is a synonym for modern society. The word designates the class that gradually destroyed, by its free activity, the old aristocratic society founded on a hierarchy of birth.”

François Furet (1927–1997) French historian

Source: The Passing of an Illusion, The Idea of Communism in the Twentieth Century (1999), p. 4

Margaret Fuller photo
John P. Kotter photo

“Motivation is not a thinking word; it’s a feeling word.”

John P. Kotter (1947) author of The heart of Change

Introduction to the 2002 edition, p. 13
The Heart of Change, (2002)

S. I. Hayakawa photo
Vin Scully photo
Robert Frost photo
Charles Darwin photo

“Fitz-Roy's temper was a most unfortunate one. It was usually worst in the early morning, and with his eagle eye he could generally detect something amiss about the ship, and was then unsparing in his blame. He was very kind to me, but was a man very difficult to live with on the intimate terms which necessarily followed from our messing by ourselves in the same cabin. We had several quarrels; for instance, early in the voyage at Bahia, in Brazil, he defended and praised slavery, which I abominated, and told me that he had just visited a great slave-owner, who had called up many of his slaves and asked them whether they were happy, and whether they wished to be free, and all answered "No." I then asked him, perhaps with a sneer, whether he thought that the answer of slaves in the presence of their master was worth anything? This made him excessively angry, and he said that as I doubted his word we could not live any longer together. I thought that I should have been compelled to leave the ship; but as soon as the news spread, which it did quickly, as the captain sent for the first lieutenant to assuage his anger by abusing me, I was deeply gratified by receiving an invitation from all the gun-room officers to mess with them. But after a few hours Fitz-Roy showed his usual magnanimity by sending an officer to me with an apology and a request that I would continue to live with him.”

Charles Darwin (1809–1882) British naturalist, author of "On the origin of species, by means of natural selection"

volume I, chapter II: "Autobiography", pages 60-61 http://darwin-online.org.uk/content/frameset?pageseq=78&itemID=F1452.1&viewtype=image
The Life and Letters of Charles Darwin (1887)

Philip José Farmer photo
Charlotte Salomon photo
Nicole Krauss photo
Ursula K. Le Guin photo
Louis C.K. photo
Tarkan photo

“Sorry can be the hardest word when you know you're wrong.”

Tarkan (1972) Turkish singer

Over
Come Closer (2006)

Peter Matthiessen photo
Waheeda Rehman photo
Leon Fleisher photo
Coventry Patmore photo

“Having my law the seventh time disobey'd,
I struck him, and dismiss'd
With hard words and unkiss'd,
—His Mother, who was patient, being dead.”

Coventry Patmore (1823–1896) English poet

The Toys, p. 50.
The Unknown Eros and Other Poems (1877)

Auguste Rodin photo
Francesco Saverio Nitti photo
Attila the Stockbroker photo

“In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was Gotcha!”

Attila the Stockbroker (1957) punk poet, folk punk musician and songwriter

"The Bible according to Rupert Murdoch", from attilathestockbroker.com http://www.attilathestockbroker.com. Retrieved 2007-03-26.
Rupert Murdoch took over William Collins, one of whose publications is The Bible. "Gotcha" was the headline in Murdoch's The Sun when the General Belgrano was sunk in the Falklands War.

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Simone Weil photo

“If a young girl is being forced into a brothel she will not talk about her rights. In such a situation the word would sound ludicrously inadequate.”

Simone Weil (1909–1943) French philosopher, Christian mystic, and social activist

Source: Simone Weil : An Anthology (1986), Human Personality (1943), p. 63

Gaston Bachelard photo
Kris Kristofferson photo

“Freedom's just another word for nothing left to lose
Nothing ain't worth nothing but it's free”

Kris Kristofferson (1936) American country music singer, songwriter, musician, and film actor

Song lyrics, Me and Bobby McGee (1969)

Emil M. Cioran photo

“Word — that invisible dagger.”

History and Utopia (1960)

Peter Medawar photo
Aung San Suu Kyi photo

“While a private individual may be bound only by the formal vows that he makes, those who govern should be wholly bound by the truth in thought, word and deed.”

Aung San Suu Kyi (1945) State Counsellor of Myanmar and Leader of the National League for Democracy

In Quest of Democracy (1991)

George Eliot photo
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Joseph Addison photo

“The union of the Word and the Mind produces that mystery which is called Life… Learn deeply of the Mind and its mystery, for therein lies the secret of immortality.”

Joseph Addison (1672–1719) politician, writer and playwright

" The Life and Teachings of Thoth Hermes Trismegistus http://magdelene.net/Thoth%20Hermes%20Trismegistus.htm", in The Secret Teachings of All Ages (1928) by the Canadian occultist Manly Hall; a few quotation websites credit this to Addison.
Misattributed

George Savile, 1st Marquess of Halifax photo
Sun Myung Moon photo

“In particular, unification represents my purpose to bring about God’s ideal world. Unification is not union. Union is when two things come together. Unification is when two become one. “Unification Church” became our commonly known name later, but it was given to us by others. In the beginning, university students referred to us as “the Seoul Church.” I do not like using the word kyo-hoi in its common usage to mean church. But I like its meaning from the original Chinese characters. Kyo means “to teach,” and Hoi means “gathering.” The Korean word means, literally, “gathering for teaching.” The word for religion, jong-kyo, is composed of two Chinese characters meaning “central” and “teaching,” respectively. When the word church means a gathering where spiritual fundamentals are taught, it has a good meaning. But the meaning of the word kyo-hoi does not provide any reason for people to share with each other. People in general do not use the word kyo-hoi with that meaning. I did not want to place ourselves in this separatist type of category. My hope was for the rise of a church without a denomination. True religion tries to save the nation, even if it must sacrifice its own religious body to do so; it tries to save the world, even at the cost of sacrificing its nation; and it tries to save humanity, even if this means sacrificing the world. By this understanding, there can never be a time when the denomination takes precedence. It was necessary to hang out a church sign, but in my heart I was ready to take it down at any time. As soon as a person hangs a sign that says “church,” he is making a distinction between church and not church. Taking something that is one and dividing itinto two is not right. This was not my dream. It is not the path I chose to travel. If I need to take down that sign to save the nation or the world, I am ready to do so at any time.”

Sun Myung Moon (1920–2012) Korean religious leader

2009, As a Peaceloving Global Citizen http://www.euro-tongil.org/swedish/english/TFbiography.pdf, page 56.

Jim Yong Kim photo
Wilhelm Liebknecht photo
John Rupert Firth photo

“The complete meaning of a word is always contextual, and no study of meaning apart from context can be taken seriously.”

John Rupert Firth (1890–1960) English linguist

Source: "The Technique of Semantics." 1935, p. 37

Báb photo
Charlotte Brontë photo
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Richard Garnett photo

“Sweet are the words of Love, sweeter his thoughts:
Sweetest of all what Love nor says nor thinks.”

Richard Garnett (1835–1906) British scholar, librarian, biographer and poet

De Flagello myrteo. clxv.

Eric Temple Bell photo

“The so-called obvious was repeatedly scrutinized from every angle and was frequently found to be not obvious but false. "Obvious" is the most dangerous word in mathematics.”

Eric Temple Bell (1883–1960) mathematician and science fiction author born in Scotland who lived in the United States for most of his li…

Source: Mathematics: Queen and Servant of Science (1938), p. 16

Richard Pipes photo
Michael Ende photo
Clinton Edgar Woods photo
Charles Dodgson (archdeacon) photo

“His reverence for sacred things was so great that he was never known to relate a story which included a jest upon words from the Bible.”

Charles Dodgson (archdeacon) (1800–1868) Anglican clergyman, scholar

Stuart Dodgson Collingwood, The Life and Letters of Lewis Carroll (1898) p. 8
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