“How can we appraise a proposal if the terms hurled at our ears can mean anything or nothing, and change their significance with the inflection of the voice? Welfare state, national socialism, radical, liberal, conservative, reactionary and a regiment of others ... these terms in today's usage, are generally compounds of confusion and prejudice. If our attitudes are muddled, our language is often to blame. A good tonic for clearer thinking is a dose of precise, legal definition.”
Quote by Dwight D. Eisenhower
“The pressure to conform to 'politically correct' speech is primarily a pressure not to use certain expressions. But when our freedom to use certain expressions is taken away, then our ability to think in certain ways is also curtailed.”
Source: The TNIV and the Gender-neutral Bible Controversy
“Languages happily restrict the mind to what is of its own native growth and fitted for it, as rivers and mountains bond countries; or the empire of learning, as well as states, would become unwieldy and overgrown.”
“Most wonderful of all are words, and how they make friends one with another.”
Source: Whirligigs
“The first author of speech was God himself, that instructed Adam how to name such creatures as He presented to his sight.”
Source: Leviathan
“Why then should words challenge Eternity, When greatest men, and greatest actions die? Use may revive the obsoletest words, And banish those that now are most in vogue; Use is the judge, the law, and rule of speech.”
Source: The Odes & Satyrs of Horace, that Have Been Done Into English by the Most Eminent Hands...: With His Art of Poetry...To this Ed. is Added Several Odes Never Before Published
“Words may be either the servants or masters. If the former they may safely guide us in the way of truth. If the latter they intoxicate the brain and lead into swamps of thought where there is no solid footing. Among the sources of those innumerable calamities which from age to age have overwhelmed mankind, may be reckoned as one of the principal, the abuse of words.”
“The common people do not accurately adapt their thoughts to objects; nor, secondly, do they accurately adapt their words to their thoughts; they do not mean to lie; but, taking no pains to be exact, they give you very false accounts. A great part of their language is proverbial; if anything rocks at all, they say it rocks like a cradle; and in this way they go on.”
Source: The life of Samuel Johnson, LL. D., comprehending an account of his studies, and numerous works, in chronological order: a series of his epistolary correspondence and conversations with many eminent persons; and various original pieces of his composition, never before published; the whole exhibiting a view of literature and literary men in Great Britain, for near half a century during which he flourished
“As any custom is disused, the words that expressed it must perish with it; as any opinion grows popular, it will innovate speech in the same proportion as it alters practice.”
Source: A Dictionary of the English Language in which the Words are Deduced from Their Originals, and Illustrated in Their Different Significations by Examples from the Best Writers, to which are Prefixed, a History of the Language and an English Grammar
“Words borrowed of Antiquity do lend a kind of Majesty to style, and are not without their delight sometimes. For they have the authority of years, and out of their intermission do win to themselves a kind of grace-like newness. But the eldest of the present, and newest of the past Language, is the best.”
Source: Delphi Complete Works of Ben Jonson (Illustrated)
“Our concepts structure what we perceive, how we get around in the world and how we relate to other people. Our conceptual system thus plays a central role in defining our everyday realities.”
Source: Metaphors We Live By
