quotations about words
In all major socializing forces you will find an underlying movement to gain and maintain power through the use of words. From witch doctor to priest to bureaucrat it is all the same. A governed populace must be conditioned to accept power-words as actual things, to confuse the symbolized system with the tangible universe. In the maintenance of such a power structure, certain symbols are kept out of reach of common understanding--symbols such as those dealing with economic manipulation or those which define the local interpretation of sanity. Symbol-secrecy of this form leads to the development of fragmented sub-languages, each being a signal that its users are accumulating some form of power.
FRANK HERBERT
Notice: Undefined variable: id in /hermes/walnacweb03/walnacweb03ak/b2149/pow.notablequote/htdocs/w/includes/quoter_subj.php on line 37
Children of Dune
Words are very unnecessary
They can only do harm
DEPECHE MODE
"Enjoy the Silence"
A word in season is most precious.
AESOP
"The Swan and the Goose", Aesop's Fables
A word is nothing unless it has values and an atmosphere, unless you grasp its historical significance.
STEFAN ZWEIG
Confusion of Feelings or Confusion
Life is like that, full of words that are not worth saying or that were worth saying once but not any more, each word that we utter will take up the space of another more deserving word not deserving in its own right, but because of the possible consequences of saying it.
JOSÉ SARAMAGO
The Cave
The clear and simple words of common usage are always better than those of erudition. The jargon of the philosophers not seldom conceals an absence of thought.
ANDRÉ MAUROIS
The Art of Writing
Abuse of words has been the great instrument of sophistry and chicanery, of party, faction, and division of society.
JOHN ADAMS
letter to J. H. Tiffany, March 31, 1819
Superfluous words simply spill out when the mind is already full.
HORACE
Ars Poetica
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.
T. S. ELIOT
Ash-Wednesday
The right word is always a power, and communicates its definiteness to our action.
GEORGE ELIOT
Middlemarch
Words have a magical power. They can bring either the greatest happiness or deepest despair; they can transfer knowledge from teacher to student; words enable the orator to sway his audience and dictate its decisions. Words are capable of arousing the strongest emotions and prompting all men's actions.
SIGMUND FREUD
attributed, The Educator's Book of Quotes
Words are not the end of thought, they are where it begins.
JANE HIRSHFIELD
"After Long Silence"
A definition is nothing else but an explication of the meaning of a word, by words whose meaning is already known. Hence it is evident that every word cannot be defined; for the definition must consist of words; and there could be no definition, if there were not words previously understood without definition.
THOMAS REID
Essays on the Intellectual Powers of Man
Throughout the years my writing has taken on many styles. Whether it was to discover myself, de-clutter my mind, get over heartache or decipher the lessons I was supposed to learn. Good or bad, words have always been there for me.
HEIDI ALLEN
"Words Are Powerful -- My Journey With Words", Huffington Post, March 14, 2017
Our words have wings, but fly not where we would.
GEORGE ELIOT
The Spanish Gypsy
Never use a big word when a little filthy one will do.
JOHNNY CARSON
The Tonight Show
Above all, beware of platitudes, i.e., word combinations that have already appeared a thousand times.... As a general rule, try to find new combinations of words (not for the sake of their novelty, but because every person sees things in an individual way and must find his own words for them).
VLADIMIR NABOKOV
letter to Kirill Nabokov, c. 1930
Our words are such powerful tools, tools that shape divine ideas into reality.
BARBARA WALSH
"Choosing our words wisely for encouragement", Deming Headlight, January 28, 2016
Language is an impure medium. Speech is public property and words are the soiled products, not of nature, but of society, which circulates and uses them for a thousand different ends.
EDWARD HIRSCH
How to Read a Poem
There are words which are worth as much as the best actions, for they contain the germ of them all.
MADAME SWETCHINE
"Airelles", The Writings of Madame Swetchine