Quotes about wording
page 91

“If I could deliver one message to the researchers who are looking for the cause of diabetes, and the cause of clogged arteries, and the cause of high blood pressure, and the cause of obesity, I would tell them the answer is in three words. It's the food!”

Michael Klaper (1947) American physician

Interview in the documentary-film What the Health by Kip Andersen (2017).

“Care and responsibility are constituent elements of love, but without respect for and knowledge of the beloved person, love deteriorates into domination and possessiveness. Respect is not fear and awe; it denotes, in accordance with the root of the word (respicere = to look at), the ability to see a person as he is, to be aware of his individuality and uniqueness. To respect a person is not possible without knowing him; care and responsibilty would be blind if they were not guided by the knowledge of the person's individuality.”

Erich Fromm (1900–1980) German social psychologist and psychoanalyst

Source: Man for Himself (1947), Ch. 3; in Ch. 2 of his later work The Art of Loving (1956) a similar statement is made :
Respect is not fear and awe; it denotes, in accordance with the root of the word (respicere = to look at), the ability to see a person as he is, to be aware of his unique individuality. Respect, thus, implies the absence of exploitation. I want the loved person to grow and unfold for his own sake, and in his own ways, and not for the purpose of serving me.

Personality, Knowledge, Love, Fear

“The word "freedom" is rather generic today, and in my mind, sadly, an ill-defined term. Many people think it simply means saying whatever you want and doing whatever you want whenever you want. But true freedom is easy to overlook today. Too many of our fellow citizens are willing to go to the polls and vote away the freedoms of themselves and others simply because they have been convinced of the supposed worthiness of some social goal.”

Lynn Compton (1921–2012) Easy Company soldier turned noted jurist

Source: Call of Duty: My Life Before, During and After the Band of Brothers (2008), p. 248

Thinking, People, Freedom

“Pancho was a bandit boys
His horse was fast as polished steel
Wore his gun outside his pants
For all the honest world to feel
Pancho met his match you know
On the deserts down in Mexico
Nobody heard his dying words
That's the way it goes
All the federales say
They could have had him any day
They only let him hang around
Out of kindness I suppose”

Townes Van Zandt (1944–1997) singer-songwriter

Pancho and Lefty (1972)

Boy, Horse, Way, World

“There was a nation among the nations, which was a sort of elder brother in this family of the oppressed, a prophet in the human tribe. This nation took the initiative of the whole human movement. It went on, saying, "Come!" and the rest followed. As a complement to the fraternity of men, in the Gospel, it taught the fraternity of nations. It spoke by the voice of its writers, of its poets, of its philosophers, of its orators, as by a single mouth, and its words flew to the extremities of the earth, to rest, like tongues of fire, upon the brow of all nations. It presided over the communion of intellects.”

Victor Hugo (1802–1885) French poet, novelist, and dramatist

Napoleon the Little (1852), Conclusion, Part Second, I
Napoleon the Little (1852)

“They determined, once for all, to make an end of the spirit of freedom and emancipation, and to drive back and repress for ever the upward tendency of mankind. To undo the labour of twenty generations; to kill in the nineteenth century, by strangulation... Luther, Descartes, and Voltaire, religious scrutiny, philosophical scrutiny, universal scrutiny; to crush throughout all Europe this immense vegetation of free thought, here a tender blade, there a sturdy oak; ...to resuscitate all they could of the Inquisition, and to stifle all they could of intelligence; to stultify youth, in other words to brutalize the future;... to say to nations: "Eat and think no more;"”

Victor Hugo (1802–1885) French poet, novelist, and dramatist

Napoleon the Little (1852), Conclusion, Part Second, I
Napoleon the Little (1852)

Freedom, Future, Intelligence, Universe

“There is... always, in a large population like that of France, a class which is ignorant, which suffers, covets, and struggles, placed between the brutish instinct which impels it to take, and the moral law which invites it to labour. In the grievous and oppressed condition in which it still is, this class, in order to maintain itself in probity and well-doing, requires all the pure and holy light that emanates from the Gospel; it requires that, on the one hand, the spirit of Jesus Christ, and, on the other, the spirit of the French Revolution, should address to it the same manly words, and should never cease to point out to it, as the only lights worthy of the eyes of man, the exalted and mysterious laws of human destiny,—self-denial, devotion, sacrifice, the labour which leads to material well-being, the probity which leads to inward well-being; even with this perennial instruction, at once divine and human, this class, so worthy of sympathy and fraternity, often succumbs.”

Victor Hugo (1802–1885) French poet, novelist, and dramatist

Napoleon the Little (1852), Conclusion, Part First, III
Napoleon the Little (1852)

Law, Light, Suffering, Self-confidence

“This tribune was the terror of every tyranny and fanaticism, it was the hope of every one who was oppressed under Heaven. Whoever placed his foot upon that height, felt distinctly the pulsations of the great heart of mankind. There, providing he was a man of earnest purpose, his soul swelled within him, and shone without. A breath of universal philanthropy seized him, and filled his mind as the breeze fills the sail; so long as his feet rested upon those four planks, he was a stronger and a better man; he felt at that consecrated minute as if he were living the life of all the nations; words of charity for all men came to his lips; beyond the Assembly, grouped at his feet, and frequently in a tumult, he beheld the people, attentive, serious, with ears strained, and fingers on lips; and beyond the people, the human race, plunged in thought, seated in circles, and listening.”

Victor Hugo (1802–1885) French poet, novelist, and dramatist

Napoleon the Little (1852), Book V, V
Napoleon the Little (1852)

Soul, Hope, Heart, People

“We who combat them are "the eternal enemies of order.". We are—for they can as yet find nothing but this worn-out word—we are demagogues. In the language of the Duke of Alva, to believe in the sacredness of the human conscience, to resist the Inquisition, to brave the state for one's faith, to draw the sword for one's country, to defend one's worship, one's city, one's home, one's house, one's family, and one's God, was called vagabondism... The man is a demagogue in the nineteenth century, who in the sixteenth would have been a vagabond.”

Victor Hugo (1802–1885) French poet, novelist, and dramatist

Book II, XI
Napoleon the Little (1852)

Family, God, Drawing, Faith

“Although I am unacquainted with astrological lore, I was drawn to the symbolic power of the pervasive dream in our popular culture: that after a dark, violent age, the Piscean, we are entering a millennium of love and light—in the words of the popular song, "The Age of Aquarius," the time of "the mind's true liberation."”

Marilyn Ferguson (1938–2008) American writer

The Aquarian Conspiracy (1980), Introduction

Time, Light, Dreams, Age

“Conspire, in its literal sense, means "to breathe together.". It is an intimate joining. To make clear the benevolent nature of this joining, I chose the word Aquarian.”

Marilyn Ferguson (1938–2008) American writer

The Aquarian Conspiracy (1980), Introduction

Sense, Making love, Nature

“We call upon you to witness, however, in the name of the Lord, beloved sons, Catholics who in the kingdom of the Gauls are united, being mindful of your religion and the faith of your fathers, we counsel you from the innermost feelings of our heart lest you secede from it, inasmuch as it is the one and the true religion, which bestows eternal life and protects citizens, even societies, and makes them prosperous. Take special care lest you proffer ears to the insidious voices of this secular sect, whose voices furnish death, and avoid in this way all usurpers whether they are called archbishops, bishops or parish priests, so that there is nothing in common between you and them, especially in divine matters...in one word, cling to us: for no-one can be in the Church of Christ unless he is unified with the visible head of the Church itself and is strengthened in the cathedral of Peter.”

Pope Pius VI (1717–1799) pope and sovereign of the Papal States

Charitas (13 April 1791), quoted in Philip G. Dwyer and Peter McPhee (eds.), The French Revolution and Napoleon: A Sourcebook (Routledge, 2002), p. 50

Faith, Religion, Death, Heart

“The word vegan should not just be used when referring to people who choose not to eat animal products because being vegan includes doing our best to abstain from participating in the other ways animals are exploited, including animal testing, wearing them, etc. Clearly there is a lot of buzz about the word vegan these days, which is great, but I think it is imperative that we keep the dialogue about this word focused on what it truly means. Veganism is simply about one's ethics and not contributing to the suffering of others.”

Lauren Ornelas American activist

"EVEN Interview with lauren Ornelas" https://www.all-creatures.org/articles/even-lauren-ornelas.pdf, All-Creatures.org (March 2016).

Suffering, People, Animals, Thinking

“You may ask what then will become of the fundamental principles of equity and fair play which our constitutions enshrine; and whether I seriously believe that unsupported they will serve merely as counsels of moderation. I do not think that anyone can say what will be left of those principles; I do not know whether they will serve only as counsels; but this much I think I do know — that a society so riven that the spirit of moderation is gone, no court can save; that a society where that spirit flourishes, no court need save; that in a society which evades its responsibility by thrusting upon the courts the nurture of that spirit, that spirit in the end will perish. What is the spirit of moderation? It is the temper which does not press a partisan advantage to its bitter end, which can understand and will respect the other side, which feels a unity between all citizens—real and not the factitious product of propaganda—which recognizes their common fate and their common aspirations—in a word, which has faith in the sacredness of the individual.”

Learned Hand (1872–1961) American legal scholar, Court of Appeals judge

"The Contribution of an Independent Judiciary to Civilization" (1942).
Extra-judicial writings

Faith, Understanding, Fate, Thinking

“We Anglophones tend to use the words nation and state more or less interchangeably, but when one nation is divided into two states, it’s important to stick to the Koreans’ own practice of distinguishing clearly between nationalism (minjokjuŭi) and patriotism / state spirit (aeguksim, kukka chŏngsin, kukkajuŭi, etc). Historians do this even in English when discussing the Weimar Republic, where nationalism undermined support for the state — and for liberal democracy — just as it does in South Korea today.”

Brian Reynolds Myers (1963) American professor of international studies

2010s, On Experts and Exegetes (September 2017)

Democracy, Support

“There came one who spoke of the shame of Jerusalem
And the holy places defiled;
Peter the Hermit, scourging with words.
And among his hearers were a few good men,
Many who were evil,
And most who were neither,
Like all men in all places.”

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

Choruses from The Rock (1934)

“Where the bricks are fallen
We will build with new stone
Where the beams are rotten
We will build with new timbers
Where the word is unspoken
We will build with new speech
There is work together
A Church for all
And a job for each
Every man to his work.”

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

Choruses from The Rock (1934)

“If the lost word is lost, if the spent word is spent
If the unheard, unspoken
Word is unspoken, unheard;
Still is the unspoken word, the Word unheard,
The Word without a word, the Word within
The world and for the world;
And the light shone in darkness and
Against the Word the unstilled world still whirled
About the centre of the silent Word.

O my people, what have I done unto thee.

Where shall the word be found, where will the word
Resound? Not here, there is not enough silence”

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

Ash-Wednesday (1930)

World, Silence, People, Light

“Lady of silences
Calm and distressed
Torn and most whole
Rose of memory
Rose of forgetfulness
Exhausted and life-giving
Worried reposeful
The single Rose
Is now the Garden
Where all loves end
Terminate torment
Of love unsatisfied
The greater torment
Of love satisfied
End of the endless
Journey to no end
Conclusion of all that
Is inconclusible
Speech without word and
Word of no speech
Grace to the Mother
For the Garden
Where all love ends.”

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

Ash-Wednesday (1930)

Forgetting, Silence, Memory, Love

“Define God in a sufficiently nebulous way as beauty, love, mysterious complexity, or the ethereal taste of strawberry shortcake, and most atheists become theists. Still, although one can pose as Humpty Dumpty and aver, “When I use a word, it means just what I choose it to mean, neither more nor less,” others needn’t play along.”

John Allen Paulos (1945) American mathematician

Preface (p. xv; the quote is from Alice in Wonderland)
Irreligion: A Mathematician Explains Why the Arguments for God Just Don’t Add Up (2008)

God, Beauty, Way, Love

“If I was a junkman selling you cars,
Washing your windows and shining your stars,
Thinking your mind was my own in a dream
What would you wonder and how would it seem?
Living in castles a bit at a time
The King started laughing and talking in rhyme.
Singing words, words between the lines of age.
Words, words between the lines of age.”

Neil Young (1945) Canadian singer-songwriter

Words (between the lines of age)
Song lyrics, Harvest (1972)

Singing, Time, Star, Dreams

“I shall not stop,
I shall not stop
Beneath the moon clothed in white,
Drowning in the morrow
With a fast-beating heart.
You remain mine, when I am aware,
You remain mine, when I am unaware.
There, in the dome of mist,
In the wells of spacious churches,
In festivals
And the glimmering of windows,
The fields of folk-song,
The desperate hum of din,
The departure of ships and wine,
You remain mine.
The shriveled and the fresh stop short,
And the earth stretches forth its head
And pursues us from word to word,
From bird
To bird
I heard from afar,
And when I tried to approach,
You held up your hand.
I heard from afar
And saw the ancient peoples
There, beyond the woods.”

Ounsi el-Hajj (1937–2014) Lebanese poet, journalist, and translator

An Anthology of Modern Arabic Poetry, p. 73
Poetry, A Cup

Clothes, People, Heart, Bird

“O people, you were not created in vain, nor will you be left to yourselves. Rather, you will return to a place in which Allah will descend in order to judge among you and distinguish between you. Destitute and lost are those who forsake the all-encompassing Mercy of Allah, and they will be excluded from Paradise, the borders of which are as wide as the heavens and the Earth. Don't you know that protection, tomorrow, will be limited to those who feared Allah [today], and to those who sold something ephemeral for something permanent, something small for something great, and fear for protection? Don't you realize that you are the descendants of those who have perished, that those who remain will take place after you, and that this will continue until you are all returned to Allah? Every day you dispatch to Allah, at all times of the day, someone who has ded, his term having come to an end. You bury him in a crack in the earth and then leave him without a pillow or a bed. He has parted from his loved ones, severed his connections with the living, and taken up residence in the earth, whereupon he comes face to face with the accounting. He is mortgaged to his deeds: He needs his accomplishments, but not the material things he left on earth. Therefore, fear Allah before death descends and its appointed times expire. I swear by Allah that I say those words to you knowing that I myself have committed more sins than any of you; I therefore ask Allah for forgiveness and I repent. Whenever we learn that one of you needs something, I try to satisfy his need to the extent that I am able. Whenever I can provide satisfaction to one of you out of you of my possessions, I seek to treat him as my equal and m relative, so that my life and his life are of equal value. I swear by Allah that had I wanted something else, namely, affluence, then it would have been easy for me to utter the word, aware as I am of the means for obtaining this. But Allah has issued in an eloquent Book (Quran) and a just example Sunnah by means of which He guides us to obedience and proscribes disobedience.”

Umar II (681–720) Umayyad caliph

History of the Prophets and Kings, Vol. 24, p. 98/99, also quoted in Umar Bin Abd Al-Aziz, p. 708-710
Last Sermon delivered to People

Forgiveness, Life, Time, Death

“I thought as a kid that talent was God-given, but it’s not. God gives you talent and you should use that talent with the real meaning of that word. I was stubborn. Maybe being young had something to do with it.”

Darko Miličić (1985) Serbian basketball player

As quoted in "Storyline: Whatever Happened to Darko Milicic" https://hoopshype.com/storyline/whatever-happened-to-darko-milicic/ (21 March 2016), HoopsHype <br class="br">2010s

“Words on the paper mix with blood,
The extraordinary labor of ten years!”

(zh-TW) 字字看來皆是血，十年辛苦不尋常。

Poem in the preface to Dream of the Red Chamber, present in its 1754 jiaxu manuscript (甲戌本), quoted in Zhou Ruchang's Between Noble and Humble, trans. Liangmei Bao (New York: Peter Lang, 2009), p. 181

“Words on the paper mix with blood,
The extraordinary labor of ten years!”

Cao Xueqin (1724–1763) Chinese writer during the Qing dynasty

(zh-TW) 字字看來皆是血，十年辛苦不尋常。

Red Inkstone, couplet in the preface to Dream of the Red Chamber, 1754 Jiaxu manuscript (甲戌本); quoted in Zhou Ruchang's Between Noble and Humble, trans. Liangmei Bao (New York: Peter Lang, 2009), p. 181.
Couplet in the preface to Dream of the Red Chamber, 1754 Jiaxu manuscript (甲戌本); the couplet is "generally considered to be written by Cao Xueqin" according to Wong Kwok-pun in Dreaming across Languages and Cultures (Newcastle upon Tyne: Cambridge Scholars Publishing, 2014), footnote on p. 71, but Zhou Ruchang attributes it to Red Inkstone in Between Noble and Humble, trans. Liangmei Bao (New York: Peter Lang, 2009), p. 181. note: Variant translations: note: Every word [in the novel] which one looks at is a drop of blood. The ten years ' painstaking labour is no commonplace.
Source: From On The Red Chamber Dream by Shichang Wu (Clarendon Press, 1961), p. 24

“Orwell in "1984" explained that "the special function of certain Newspeak words … was not so much to express meanings as to destroy them." When terrorists attack, they’re terrorizing. When we attack, we’re retaliating. When they respond to our retaliation with further attacks, they’re terrorizing again... At all times, Americans must be kept fully informed about who to hate and fear...”

Norman Solomon (1951) American journalist, media critic, antiwar activist

"Orwellian Logic 101 — A Few Simple Lessons", in FAIR https://fair.org/media-beat-column/orwellian-logic-101-8212-a-few-simple-lessons/ (27 August 1998)

Fear, Hate, Time

“Remain in Me." It is the Word of God who gives this order, expresses this wish. Remain in Me, not for a few moments, a few hours which must pass away, but "remain...”

Elizabeth of the Trinity (1880–1906) French Carmelite nun and mystic

permanently, habitually, Remain in Me, pray in Me, adore in Me, love in Me, suffer in Me, work and act in Me.

First Day, 3
Heaven in Faith (1906)

“Every day, we are learning more about this virus and the disease it causes. One of the things we are learning is that although older people are the hardest hit, younger people are not spared. Data from many countries clearly show that people under 50 make up a significant proportion of patients requiring hospitalization. Today, I have a message for young people: you are not invincible. This virus could put you in hospital for weeks, or even kill you. Even if you don’t get sick, the choices you make about where you go could be the difference between life and death for someone else. I’m grateful that so many young people are spreading the word and not the virus. As I keep saying, solidarity is the key to defeating COVID-19 - solidarity between countries, but also between age groups. Thank you for heeding our call for solidarity, solidarity, solidarity.”

Tedros Adhanom (1965) Director-General of the World Health Organization, former Minister in Ethiopia

WHO Director-General's opening remarks at the media briefing on COVID-19 - 20 March 2020 https://www.who.int/dg/speeches/detail/who-director-general-s-opening-remarks-at-the-media-briefing-on-covid-19---20-march-2020, World Health Organization.

Making love, Country, People, Learning

“[A]crobatics are very much an American thing. No one does wishful thinking like we do. I don’t see South Korean progressivists pretending that the regime’s every word and deed can be boiled down to the same reassuring message. In fact, part of the reason many of them feel a sneaking admiration for the North is because it follows through on its Yankee-defying rhetoric. But that’s another topic.”

Brian Reynolds Myers (1963) American professor of international studies

2010s, On Experts and Exegetes (September 2017)

Thinking, Feeling, Parting

“He was one of those scientist-artists who comes along every few centuries to justify the existence of that overworked word “genius.””

Roger Zelazny book Today We Choose Faces

Part 2, Chapter 6 (p. 108)
Today We Choose Faces (1973)

“According to Confucian writings, wise individuals, wanting good government, looked first within, seeking precise words to express their hitherto unvoiced yearnings, "the tones given off by the heart."”

Marilyn Ferguson (1938–2008) American writer

Once they were able to verbalize the intelligence of the heart they disciplined themselves. Order within the self led first to harmony within their own households, then the state, and finally the empire.
The Aquarian Conspiracy (1980), Chapter Seven, Right Power

“The word "communist" (as well as "Marxist") has been so overused and so abused by American leaders and the media as to render it virtually meaningless.”

William Blum (1933–2018) American author and historian

The Left has done the same to the word "fascist".
Killing Hope: US Military and CIA Interventions Since World War II, Introduction

“Both evolutionary scientists and anthropologists, who approach the phenomena from very discrepant points of view, have, in other words, reached the conclusion that reciprocity, which creates enduring social bonds based on trust and mutual obligations, is a fundamental aspect of human life.”

Thomas Hylland Eriksen (1962) Norwegian social anthropologist and professor

Source: What is Anthropology? (2nd ed., 2017), Ch. 5 : Reciprocity

“What I want to know is what a fellow does when he plays golf. Tell me in as few words as you can just what it's all about. -- You hit a ball with a stick until it falls into a hole.”

P.G. Wodehouse (1881–1975) English author

"The Heel of Achilles"
The Clicking Of Cuthbert (1922)

“I need hardly say that I agree with almost every word of my critics. I have repeatedly dwelt on the entirely hypothetical character of the dates I ventured to assign to the first three periods of Vedic literature. All I have claimed for them has been that they are minimum dates”

Max Müller (1823–1900) German-born philologist and orientalist

Max Muller. (Preface to the text of the Rigveda, Vol.4, p.xiii). Quoted in https://talageri.blogspot.com/2016/07/the-recorded-history-of-indo-european_27.html

“You would be better off, frankly, to use the name of Jesus Christ or God in an occasional curse word than to live an ongoing, hypocritical life that blasphemes His name from beginning to end.”

John F. MacArthur (1939) American pastor and author

2000s, Saved or Self-Deceived, Part 2 (2007)

God, Life, Christ

“I have only your word for that.”

Alastair Reynolds book House of Suns

“Yes,” the glass man said, “that’s rather the point. There’s going to have to be a lot more trust from this time forward. Why don’t we start as we mean to go on?”

Chapter 41 (p. 563)
House of Suns (2008)

“We use the word God. God hooks all the other words up. I'm the pope. I'm ten times the pope. I'm fifty times the pope. But I'm the pope in the hills and in the mountains.”

Charles Manson (1934–2017) American criminal and musician

Interview http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mJHq2aN9tYE by Penny Daniels (1989)

Mountain, God, Time

“A lot of people recoil from the word "drugs".”

David Pearce (philosopher) (1959) British transhumanist

which is understandable given today's noxious street drugs and their uninspiring medical counterparts. Yet even academics and intellectuals in our society typically take the prototypical dumb drug, ethyl alcohol. If it's socially acceptable to take a drug that makes you temporarily happy and stupid, then why not rationally design drugs to make people perpetually happier and smarter? Presumably, in order to limit abuse-potential, one would want any ideal pleasure drug to be akin - in one limited but important sense - to nicotine, where the smoker's brain finely calibrates its optimal level: there is no uncontrolled dose-escalation.<br><br>" The Abolitionist Project https://www.abolitionist.com/", Talks given at the FHI (Oxford University) and the Charity International Happiness Conference, 2007

“Next time you hear Leftists use the word fascist as a general insult, gently point out the difference between what they like to imagine the NSDAP stood for and what it actually proclaimed.”

Daniel Hannan (1971) British politician

2010s, Nazism (2014)

Imagination, Time

“America's Founding Fathers wrote a Constitution that never once uses the words "corporation," "company," or "political parties."”

Ralph Nader (1934) American consumer rights activist and corporate critic

Their use of language reflected their antipathy toward the domineering influence of empire and big business... If "We the People" are the sole subjects of the Constitution, why is it that we are ruled by large corporations and their largely indentured servants—the Republican and Democratic Parties... "We the People" have allowed these plutocratic forces to slowly siphon away our power.
Breaking Through Power (2016)

“You hear people say, “Well, I’m an agnostic.” Really? You shouldn’t be proud to be an agnostic because the Latin equivalent is ignoramus. It’s the same word. I’ve never heard anybody say, “I’m personally an ignoramus.””

John F. MacArthur (1939) American pastor and author

But if you don’t know, you don’t know. That’s what an ignoramus is. If you have an open mind close it, would you please, before you destroy yourself. Close it.<br><br> "Scripture Is Sufficient" https://www.gty.org/library/sermons-library/80-420/scripture-is-sufficient (1 March 2015), Grace to You <br class="br">2010s

Personality, People

“All of management’s efforts for Kaizen boil down to two words: customer satisfaction.”

Masaaki Imai (1930) Japanese business theorist and consultant

“Caste is real. The working class is real. Being a Naga is real. But ‘India is just a geographical expression!’ Similarly, being a Muslim of course is real – Islam must be seen and talked of as one block of granite – ... But Hinduism? Why, there is no such thing: it is just an aggregation, a pile of assorted beliefs and practices – ... And anyone who maintains anything to the contrary is a fascist out to insinuate a unity, indeed to impose a uniformity, where there has been none. That is what our progressive ideologues declaim, as we have seen. In a word, the parts alone are real. The whole is just a construct. India has never been one, these ideologues insist – disparate peoples and regions were knocked together by the Aryans, by the Mughals, by the British for purposes of empire. Anyone who wants to use that construct – India – as the benchmark for determining the sort of structure under which we should live has a secret agenda – of enforcing Hindu hegemony.
This is the continuance of, in a sense the culmination of, the Macaulay-Missionary technique. The British calculated that to subjugate India and hold it, they must undermine the essence of the people: this was Hinduism, and everything which flowed from it. Hence the doggedness with which they set about to undermine the faith and regard of the people for five entities: the gods and goddesses the Hindus revered; the temples and idols in which they were enshrined; the texts they held sacred; the language in which those texts and everything sacred in that tradition was enshrined and which was even in mid-nineteenth-century the lingua franca – that is, Sanskrit; and the group whose special duty it had been over aeons to preserve that way of life – the Brahmins. The other component of the same exercise was to prop up the parts – the non-Hindus, the regional languages, the castes and groups which they calculated would be the most accessible to the missionaries and the empire – the innocent tribals, the untouchables.”

Arun Shourie (1941) Indian journalist and politician

Eminent Historians: Their Technology, Their Line, Their Fraud (1998)

God, Faith, People, Secret

“The most extensive deletions are ordered in regard to the chapter on ‘Aurangzeb’s policy on religion’. Every allusion to what he actually did to the Hindus, to their temples, to the very leitmotif of his rule – to spread the sway of Islam – are directed to be excised from the book. He is to be presented as one who had an aversion – an ordinary sort of aversion, almost a secular one – to music and dancing, to the presence of prostitutes in the court, and that it is these things he banished... In a word, no forcible conversions, no massacres, no destruction of temples. Just that Hinduism had created an exploitative, casteist society. Islam was egalitarian. Hence the oppressed Hindus embraced Islam!
Muslim historians of those times are in raptures at the heap of kafirs who have been dispatched to hell. Muslim historians are forever lavishing praise on the ruler for the temples he has destroyed, for the hundreds of thousands he has got to see the light of Islam. Law books like The Hedaya prescribe exactly the options to which these little textbooks alluded. All whitewashed away.
Objective whitewash for objective history. And today if anyone seeks to restore truth to these textbooks, the shout, ‘Communal rewriting of history’.”

Arun Shourie (1941) Indian journalist and politician

Eminent Historians: Their Technology, Their Line, Their Fraud (1998)

Hell, Religion, Time, Law

“Out of nowhere I have appeared. They see me for the first time. No longer the image, but reality. They see and they hear me. I raise my arms, and the gasps and babble die down. I begin to speak the words we knew and decided long ago. Each hears me in his own tongue.”

Desmond Leslie (1921–2001) British pilot, film maker, writer, and musician

Source: The Amazing Mr. Lutterworth (1958), p.200

Reality, Appearance, Time

“What sweeter than this in the world!
Friend met friend and the lover joined his Beloved.
That was all sorrow, this is all joy
Those were all words, this is all reality.”

Abu Sa'id Abu'l-Khayr (967–1049) poet

World, Joy, Reality, Lovers

“I myself have experienced the volcanic existential depths of the Greek language. It was during a performance of Medea by Tzeni Karezi at the Herod Atticus theatre in Athens ,when she was pleading to the callous Jason to take pity on her and she used the word ' splachniasou.'”

Angelique Rockas South African actress and founder of Internationalist Theatre, London

'Pity' is too weak a word to describe the emotional and psychological depths ' splachniasou' expresses. 'Splachna 'is the part of the body where a woman carries her unborn children, the very root of ontological existence. How deep can you get!

On the Greek language
Interview on Helenism .net (September 2011)

“In other words, gurus generalize from their own experience. Some gurus are inclined to believe that all humanity should accept their vision: others allege that, when the last trump sounds, their own followers will be saved, whilst the majority of mankind will remain unredeemed. This apparently arrogant assumption is closely connected with certain features of personality displayed by a variety of gurus.”

Anthony Storr (1920–2001) English psychiatrist

Introduction (p. XII–XIII)
Feet of Clay; Saints, Sinners, and Madmen: A Study of Gurus (1996, 1997)

“The mere word 'design' by itself has no consequences and explains nothing. It is the barrenest of principles. The old question of whether there is design is idle.”

William James (1842–1910) American philosopher, psychologist, and pragmatist

[Pragmatism, William James, Lecture Three: Some Metaphysical Problems Pragmatically Considered, 80-81, Meridian Books, New York, 1955]https://archive.org/stream/in.ernet.dli.2015.114743/2015.114743.Pragmatism-And-Four-Essays-From-The-Meaning-Of-Truth_djvu.txt}}
1900s

“Scholars still debate whether Columbus brought syphilis to the New World or vice versa. But it cannot be doubted that the 2008 world meltdown carries on its label the words Made in America.”

Paul A. Samuelson (1915–2009) American economist

"Farewell to Friedman-Hayek Libertarian Capitalism", Tribune Media Services (2008)
New millennium

“The “reasons” and “causes” why things happen, in other words, aren’t fundamental; they are emergent. We need to dig in to the actual history of the universe to see why these concepts have emerged.”

Sean Carroll (1966) American theoretical cosmologist

Chap. 5 : Reasons Why
The Big Picture (2016)

Universe, History

“Through the sounding of the Word and through reflection upon its meaning, the Way is found.”

Patañjali (-200–-150 BC) ancient Indian scholar(s) of grammar and linguistics, of yoga, of medical treatises

The Light of the Soul: Its Science and Effect : a paraphrase of the Yoga Sutras of Patanjali, with commentary by Alice A. Bailey, (1927)

“I went one afternoon to the church of my childhood and had a vision of what I must have really meant with "Beat"... the vision of the word Beat as being to mean beatific... People began to call themselves beatniks, beats, jazzniks, bopniks, bugniks and finally I was called the "avatar" of all this.”

Jack Kerouac (1922–1969) American writer

"The Origins of the Beat Generation" in Playboy (June 1959)

Childhood, People

“I have met lots of women who have grown up in Turkey who cannot bring themselves to swear in Turkish. But in English they use the F-word all the time. Writing is like that for me.”

Elif Shafak (1971) Turkish writer

On comparing writing to the freedoms that Turkish women have found in another language in “Elif Shafak: ‘I thought the British were calm about politics. Not any longer’” https://www.theguardian.com/books/2019/sep/16/elif-shalak-i-thought-the-british-were-calm-about-politics-booker-prize-shortlist in The Guardian (2019 Sep 16)

“On Sunday I engaged in Meditation and received some benefit. I wished I could see you to speak of it. Yet these things are too high for words, and when we approach the subjects we are not able to give expression to our thoughts.”

William Quan Judge (1851–1896) American occult writer

Vol. I, Letter 7
Letters That Have Helped Me (1891)

“I never use the word nationalism, certainly not as a model for Hindus to adopt. Nationalism is a misstatement of Hindu concerns. It leads to misconceptions.”

Koenraad Elst (1959) orientalist, writer

Koenraad Elst on Twitter https://twitter.com/Koenraad_Elst/status/1213206747021578240 <br class="br">2020s

“Freedom is just another word for nothing left to lose,
Nothing don’t mean nothing honey if it ain’t free...
And feeling good was easy, lord, when he sang the blues.
You know feeling good was good enough for me,
Good enough for me and my Bobby McGee.”

Janis Joplin (1943–1970) American singer and songwriter

"Me and Bobby McGee" another of her greatest hits, the song was actually written by Kris Kristofferson, and first released as sung by Roger Miller
Misattributed

Feeling, Freedom

“As for "decadence," that is an eminently bourgeois swear-word for people perceived to be having more fun than you are.”

Bob Black (1951) American anarchist

Source: Anarchy after Leftism (1997), Chapter 1: Murray Bookchin, Grumpy Old Man

“Strong families use the word "we" a lot, but "I" is never forgotten. Family members know they have the freedom to go off on their own, even if the direction is one that "we" have never followed before. The family message is, "We're behind you, so you can be you."”

Joyce Brothers (1927–2013) Joyce Brothers

10 Keys to a Strong Family (2002)

Family, Strong, Freedom

“People are aging with time.
Reflections on our contribution in this life is necessary.
Sincere words are precious.
For people can never have enough of pearls of wisdom.”

Deng Feng-Zhou (1949) Chinese poet, Local history writer, Taoist Neidan academics and Environmentalist.

(zh-TW) 日月催人老，今生有幾何？
真言誠可貴，感語不嫌多。

"Occasional thoughts" (偶感)

Source: Deng Feng-Zhou, "Deng Feng-Zhou Classical Chinese Poetry Anthology". Volume 6, Tainan, 2018: 88.

Time, People, Sincerity, Age

“The first principle of value that we need to rediscover is this: that all reality hinges on moral foundations. In other words, that this is a moral universe, and that there are moral laws of the universe just as abiding as the physical laws. I'm not so sure we all believe that.”

Martin Luther King, Jr. (1929–1968) American clergyman, activist, and leader in the American Civil Rights Movement

1950s, Rediscovering Lost Values (1954)

Universe, Reality, Law

“I doubt if such a word exists, and if it does, it shouldn’t.”

Arthur C. Clarke book Silence Please

Silence Please, p. 247
2000s and posthumous publications, The Collected Stories of Arthur C. Clarke (2001)

“The history of failure in war can almost be summed up in two words: 'Too late.'”

Douglas MacArthur (1880–1964) U.S. Army general of the army, field marshal of the Army of the Philippines

Too late in comprehending the deadly purpose of a potential enemy; too late in realizing the mortal danger; too late in preparedness; too late in uniting all possible forces for resistance, too late in standing with one's friends. Victory in war results from no mysterious alchemy or wizardry but depends entirely upon the concentration of superior force at the critical points of combat.

Statement MacArthur made in 1940, as quoted by James B. Reston in Prelude to Victory (1942), p. 64
1940s

War, Failure, History

“But has the last word been said? Must hope disappear? Is defeat final? No!”

Charles de Gaulle (1890–1970) eighteenth President of the French Republic

Appeal of June 18, Speech of June 18

“The written word is far more powerful than simply a reminder: it re-creates the past in the present, and gives us, not the familiar remembered thing, but the glittering intensity of the summoned-up hallucination.”

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

The Great Code: The Bible and Literature (1981) according to Neil Postman Amusing Ourselves to Death p 13.
"Quotes", The Great Code: The Bible and Literature (1982)

“The evils of a military system, which, after all, every day must attenuate, are light compared with the evils of an anarchic conservatism reinstated in central Europe. Divided Germany means preponderating Russia. What can be more desirable in the interests of the highest civilisation than the interposition in the heart of the European state-system, of a powerful, industrious, intelligent, and progressive people, between the western nations and the half-barbarous Russian swarms? To the careful observer of the history of modern Europe it is plain that increasing vigour and self-conscious strength in Germany are other words for the spread eastwards of the best of those ideas, the most durable of those civilising elements, in which the difference of historic development has enabled England and France to anticipate her.”

John Morley, 1st Viscount Morley of Blackburn (1838–1923) British Liberal statesman, writer and newspaper editor

Fortnightly Review (September 1870), p. 371
1870s

History, Light, Intelligence, People

“I will never lie to you. You have my word on that.”

Kayleigh McEnany (1988) American political commentator and writer

Source: Spoken to Associated Press reporter Jill Colvin, during McEnany's first press briefing as press secretary on 2020-05-01 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=11C8EoM15Ts; quoted in “[https://boingboing.net/2020/05/01/i-will-never-lie-to-you-trump.html

“When the word "peace" was uttered for the first time, there was panic at the stock exchange. They screamed in pain: "We've been earning! Leave us the war! We've earned the war!"”

Karl Kraus (1874–1936) Czech playwright and publicist

Half-Truths and One-And-A-Half Truths (1976)

War, Peace, Pain, Time

“My intellect has been shaped under the sign of Spinoza's words, and it has tried not to be astounded, not to laugh, not to cry, but to understand.”

Lev Vygotsky (1896–1934) Soviet psychologist

Vygotsky, in his dissertation thesis Psychology of Art [original in Russian]

Cry, Understanding

“Prayers will be offered up for the success of our work in temples and in churches also; for it will bring relief from an old burden, which all have suffered.
But we must first bring enlightenment to men's minds. The idea must make its way into the most distant, miserable holes where our people dwell. They will awaken from gloomy brooding, for into their lives will come a new significance. Every man need think only of himself, and the movement will assume vast proportions.
And what glory awaits those who fight unselfishly for the cause!
Therefore I believe that a wondrous generation of Jews will spring into existence. The Maccabeans will rise again.
Let me repeat once more my opening words: The Jews who wish for a State will have it.
We shall live at last as free men on our own soil, and die peacefully in our own homes.
The world will be freed by our liberty, enriched by our wealth, magnified by our greatness.
And whatever we attempt there to accomplish for our own welfare, will react powerfully and beneficially for the good of humanity.”

Theodor Herzl (1860–1904) Austro-Hungarian journalist and writer

VI : Conclusion
Der Judenstaat [The Jewish State] (1896)

Home, Success, Wealth, Spring

“That idea that car manufacturers might disinvest after we leave the EU? It's a - what's the word?”

Daniel Hannan (1971) British politician

oh yes. Lie.<br><br> Tweet by verified account https://twitter.com/DanielJHannan/status/644428141302255616 (17 September 2015) <br class="br">2010s

“Faced with the nonsense question "What is the meaning of a word?"”

J. L. Austin (1911–1960) English philosopher

and perhaps dimly recognizing it to be nonsense, we are nevertheless not inclined to give it up.

p. 58
Philosophical Papers (1979)

“Proverbs are the palm-oil with which words are eaten.”

Chinua Achebe book Things Fall Apart

Source: Things Fall Apart (1958), Chapter 1

“If I tell a lie, something is left out;
If I speak out the truth, there is a blaze.
My mind fears both the alternatives,
But haltingly my tongue speaks out.
Words that come to my tongue cannot be held back.
If I were to unravel the mysteries,
All would forget to discuss and debate.
They would then kill our friend Bullah,
For only the hidden truth befits here.”

Bulleh Shah (1680–1757) Punjabi poet

Bulleh Shah, The Love-Intoxicated Iconoclast, p. 130
Poetry

Truth, Lie, Fear, Forgetting

“The Word of Ishvara is AUM (or OM). This is the Pranava.
II. The Sacred Word. This is the Word of Glory, the AUM. This is the Pranava, the sound of conscious Life itself as It is breathed forth into all forms...”

Patañjali (-200–-150 BC) ancient Indian scholar(s) of grammar and linguistics, of yoga, of medical treatises

The Light of the Soul: Its Science and Effect: a paraphrase of the Yoga Sutras of Patanjali, with commentary by Alice A. Bailey, (1927)

“The Word of Ishvara is AUM (or OM). This is the Pranava.
II. The Sacred Word. This is the Word of Glory, the AUM. This is the Pranava, the sound of conscious Life itself as It is breathed forth into all forms...”

Alice A. Bailey (1880–1949) esoteric, theosophist, writer

Source: The Light of the Soul: Its Science and Effect: a paraphrase of the Yoga Sutras of Patanjali, with commentary (1927)

“It wept by the waters of Babylon,
And when all men were a loss,
It screeched in writhing agony,
And it hung bleeding from the Cross. It died in Rome by lion and sword,
And in defiant cruel array,
When the deathly word was ‘Spartacus’
Along the Appian Way.”

Bobby Sands (1954–1981) Irish volunteer of the Provisional Irish Republican Army

Poetry, The Rhythm of Time

Way, Water, Loss, Men

“We are a short poem
in a endless emptiness page,
words are lighthouses
that ignites and struggle
to deliver light to the dark edges of the infinite,
and mystic sounds struggle to give voice
to the unlived beings,
to bore a young soul to the gate of birth.”

alexis karpouzos

spirituality and consciousness

Light, Soul, Birth

“May I therefore close with these simple words: Please give us your aid, my brothers.”

Alice A. Bailey (1880–1949) esoteric, theosophist, writer

Source: The Externalization of the Hierarchy (1957), p. 26

“When truth cannot make itself known in words, it will make itself known in deeds.”

Roger Scruton (1944–2020) English philosopher

"Should he have spoken?", The New Criterion (September 2006), p. 22; also in The Roger Scruton Reader (2009) edited by Mark Dooley

Truth, Making love

“I’m always amused by those commentators who nervously insist that the working class’s constant use of the word fuck is really just “a form of punctuation.””

Don Paterson (1963) Poet

It is, however, no more or less then what they dread: an inexhaustible river of smelted wrath, a Phlegethon of ancestral grievance.
"Aphorisms" (2005)

“…I engage with poetry musically. I think I hear the music of the poem before I put words to it. The poem comes to me as it were a song more than a string of words or images. If I can’t transport that musical quality to the poem, then the poem doesn’t exist for me…”

Lucha Corpi (1945)

On how she favors a musical quality to her poetry in the book Truthtellers of the Times: Interviews with Contemporary Women Poets https://books.google.com/books?id=LkVO9mmfwZYC&pg=PA23&lpg=PA23&dq

Music, Thinking

“Dialogue is always tricky. Authenticity is almost impossible, and you always end up sounding too olde worlde. What I do is to strip the words back, so I get the dialogue to sound timeless…”

Tracy Chevalier (1962) American writer

On how she composes character dialogue in “Tracy Chevalier: 'Slavery has to be raised until it's put to bed'” https://www.theguardian.com/books/2013/mar/17/tracy-chevalier-interview-last-runaway in The Guardian (2013 Mar 16)

“…I have discovered that plays are easier to write than novels if the writer has a certain verbal facility, a certain capacity for the colloquial, an ear for the secret cadences of the spoken word. A play can be written with more ease than a novel…”

Luis Rafael Sánchez (1936) Puerto Rican playwright and novelist

On plays versus novels in “Luis Rafael Sánchez: Counterpoints" https://ufdc.ufl.edu/UF00096005/00024/14j (Sargasso, 1984)

“The Christmas-Festival is in one sense only, a Christian festival. It is based upon something belonging to the Greek and Roman paganism which the Christians took over. It is therefore older than Christianity. It is 'pagan,' to use the popular word.”

Gottfried de Purucker (1874–1942) Author, Theosophist

Source: The Story of Jesus (1938), Chapter 2

Sense, Christmas

“As poets we tend to not like the word “responsibility. I think it’s one of the major responsibilities of the poet.”

Juan Felipe Herrera (1948) American writer

We prefer “freedom”, we want to be as free as we can, but freedom and responsibility can go together. We’re responsible because we’re writers, and we’ve been at this all our lives…<br><br>On the poet having both responsibility and freedom in “Interview with Juan Felipe Herrera” https://gulfstreamlitmag.com/archives/online-archives/current-issue-4/features/interview-with-juan-felipe-herrera/ (Gulf Stream, 2015)

“We told ourselves that it didn’t matter if there was no word to cement our reality…We were the ones that made it real. And yet, the sense of otherness loomed.”

Edith Windsor (1929–2017) American LGBT rights activist and a technology manager at IBM

On wanting to legitimize her relationship (as quoted in “Gay rights icon Edie Windsor’s sheer force carries ‘A Wild and Precious Life’” https://www.tampabay.com/arts-entertainment/arts/books/2019/10/08/gay-rights-icon-edie-windsors-sheer-force-carries-a-wild-and-precious-life/) (Tampa Bay; 2019 Oct 8)

“'Because it's there' could never be enough of an explanation for entering politics. ... My focus on work comes from my own childhood and my own personal experience.
My parents, particularly Dad, taught me through word and deed that the world does not owe you a living.
That you should expect throughout your life to be required to earn what you intend to spend.”

Julia Gillard (1961) Australian politician and lawyer, 27th Prime Minister of Australia

From the autobiography

Childhood, Personality, Parent, World

“Whatever work I did became worship of the Lord;
Whatever word I uttered became a prayer;
Whatever this body of mine experienced became
the sadhana of Saiva Tantra
illumining my path to Parmasiva.”

Lalleshwari (1320–1392) Indian writer, mystic and saint

Lal Ded Vekhas http://ikashmir.net/lalded/vakhs.html <br class="br">Poetry, From Kashmiri Poetry

“How a pleasant word of an old lover that said
When there is lovem there is no comfort.”

Jami (1414–1492) Persian poet

Joseph and Zuleika, p. 254
Poetry, Poetry from Joseph and Zuleika

“Every time I hear the word culture I release the safety catch on my 9mm.”

Banksy pseudonymous England-based graffiti artist, political activist, and painter

Banging Your Head Against a Brick Wall (2001)

“I cannot call riches better than the baggage of virtue. The Roman word is better, impedimenta. For as the baggage is to an army, so is riches to virtue. It cannot be spared, nor left behind, but it hindereth the march; yea, and the care of it, sometimes loseth or disturbeth the victory.”

Francis Bacon (1561–1626) English philosopher, statesman, scientist, jurist, and author

The Essays Or Counsels, Civil And Moral, Of Francis Ld. Verulam Viscount St. Albans (1857), Riches

“And isn't it usually so, that lovers who share their daily lives with each other gradually find they need to put very little into words?”

Susan Sontag (1933–2004) American writer and filmmaker, professor, and activist

Source: Death Kit (1967), p.270

“Sin and love and fear are just sounds that people who never sinned nor loved nor feared have for what they never had and cannot have until they forget the words.”

William Faulkner book As I Lay Dying

As I Lay Dying (1930)

Forgetting, People, Love, Fear

“He had a word, too. Love, he called it. But I had been used to words for a long time. I knew that that word was like the others: just a shape to fill a lack; that when the right time came, you wouldn't need a word for that anymore than for pride or fear.”

William Faulkner book As I Lay Dying

As I Lay Dying (1930)

Love, Fear, Making love, Time

“I have always loved playing around with words. I didn’t know it was called poetry. I was just an innocent kid messing around with words when an adult said ‘You’re a poet, be published or be damned’.”

Benjamin Zephaniah (1958) English poet and author

On the realization that he was a poet in “Interview with Benjamin Zephaniah” https://www.writersandartists.co.uk/writers/advice/37/a-writers-toolkit/interviews-with-authors/interview-with-benjamin-zephaniah in Writers & Artists

Love, Making love

“In few words, mysteries are due to secrecy. Besides (to say truth) nakedness is uncomely, as well in mind as body; and it addeth no small reverence, to men's manners and actions, if they be not altogether open.”

Francis Bacon (1561–1626) English philosopher, statesman, scientist, jurist, and author

The Essays Or Counsels, Civil And Moral, Of Francis Ld. Verulam Viscount St. Albans (1625), Of Simulation And Dissimulation

“Spoken Word poetry is an art form that fits me well because it enables me to bring all the layers of who I am into one space — A reader, writer, and performer…”

Raymond Antrobus (1986)

On his preferred poetry style in “Prose Interviews London Poet Raymond Antrobus” https://medium.com/prose-matters/prose-interviews-london-poet-raymond-antrobus-c0e1fdf720b9 in Medium Magazine (2016 Mar 30)