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Jargon Quotes

“Literary criticism can be no more than a reasoned account of the feeling produced upon the critic by the book he is criticizing. Criticism can never be a science: it is, in the first place, much too personal, and in the second, it is concerned with values that science ignores. The touchstone is emotion, not reason. We judge a work of art by its effect on our sincere and vital emotion, and nothing else. All the critical twiddle-twaddle about style and form, all this pseudoscientific classifying and analysing of books in an imitation-botanical fashion, is mere impertinence and mostly dull jargon.”

ArtReasonScienceEmotionInterpretationFeelingReadWriteLiterary CriticismJargonAnalyzeInterpret
Author:D.H. Lawrence
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“Creationists have also changed their name ... to intelligent design theorists who study 'irreducible complexity' and the 'abrupt appearance' of life—yet more jargon for 'God did it.' ... Notice that they have no interest in replacing evolution with native American creation myths or including the Code of Hammurabi alongside the posting of the Ten Commandments in public schools.”

SchoolScienceEvolutionNative AmericanFirst AmendmentSuperstitionSeparation Of Church And StateTen CommandmentsMythsJargonPseudoscienceIntelligent DesignOrigin Of LifeSophistryCreation MythsCreationistsGod Did ItIrreducible ComplexityHammurabiCode Of HammurabiGoddidit
Author:Michael Shermer
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“If we were not impressed by job titles, suits, and jargon, we would demand that financial advisors show us their personal bank statements before they tell us what we could or should do with our own money.”

HumorFunnyJobsQuotesLanguageWealthMoneyRichShareAdvicePolicyHumourClothesHumorousQuoteProfoundInvestmentPhilosopherQuote Of The DayRichesIncomeImpressionSuitsThoughtfulSatireWealthyThought ProvokingDeepInsightfulJobAphorismSouth AfricaPassiveImpressedImpressQuotationsWagesAfricaMaximsSayingsSalaryAdagesProverbsAphorismsMake You ThinkAxiomsAdageProverbSatiricalSayingShareholdersEpigramsInvestFinancial FreedomJargonAfricanTailorsQuotationGnomeClothingSatiristAdvisorsMaximEpigramGnomesProvoke ThoughtMade Me ThinkAxiomDictumDictumsBanksBankSouth AfricanInvestmentsFinancial AdviceSharesSatiristsSuitPoliciesBombasticPassive IncomeFinancial AdvisorWageJob TitlesAdvicesTailored SuitsSalariesClothes Make The ManBombastAdvisorShareholdingTailorJob TitleShareholderTuxedoFinancial AdvisorsTailor MadeBank StatementBank StatementsClothes Maketh The ManFinancial AdvicesTailored Suit
Author:Mokokoma Mokhonoana
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“In many a case, the phrase ‘I’d like to get to know you better’ is a euphemism for ‘I want us to fuck.”

WritingRomanceLanguageRelationshipsTalkingRelationshipStyleCommunicationBedConversationSpeechCourtWordsTonguePursueDiscourseWoeVocabularyCantAcquaintanceKnowTalkSeeSpeakingCourtshipDialectJargonDateIdiomSlangEuphemismTerminologyFuckChaseMother TongueSexual IntercourseWordingCourtingExpressionsMake LoveEuphemismsWooChoice Of WordsLingoSleep WithPatoisNative TonguePhrasingAcquaintMake AcquaintanceParlancePhraseologyTurns Of PhraseUsagesArgotDysphemismDysphemismsForm Of ExpressionGo Out WithGo Steady WithIdiolectLocutionsMode Of ExpressionRun AfterSeek The HandSet One S Cap For
Author:Mokokoma Mokhonoana
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“Why do scientists never debate philosophers? It’s because they know they would be destroyed in argument, when they have to actually clarify their ridiculous and embarrassing belief system. Mandarins, in their little priesthoods, hide behind jargon so that they know that no outsiders can laugh at their lack of clarity. They create an in-language so that only the insiders can know how absurd the belief system is, and they all have a vested interest in maintaining the fiction. That’s how the Mandarin system works. They don’t dare to be clear because then it would be clear that they are the emperor in his new clothes and know nothing at all.”

ClarityPriestsAmbiguityJargonScientistsIvory TowerObscurantismSophists
Book:The Mandarin Effect: The Crisis of Meaning
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“No writer ever knows enough words but he doesn’t have to try to use all that he does know. Tests would show that I had an enormous vocabulary and through the years it must have grown, but I never had a desire to display it in the way that John Updike or William Buckley or William Safire do to such lovely and often surprising effect. They use words with such spectacular results; I try, not always successfully, to follow the pattern of Ernest Hemingway who achieved a striking style with short familiar words. I want to avoid calling attention to mine, judging them to be most effective as ancillaries to a sentence with a strong syntax. My approach has been more like that of Somerset Maugham, who late in life confessed that when he first thought of becoming a writer he started a small notebook in which he jotted down words that seemed unusually beautiful or exotic, such as chalcedony, for as a novice he believed that good writing consisted of liberally sprinkling his text with such words. But years later, when he was a successful writer, he chanced to review his list and found that he had never used even one of his beautiful collection. Good writing, for most of us, consists of trying to use ordinary words to achieve extraordinary results. I struggle to find the right word and keep always at hand the largest dictionary my workspace can hold, and I do believe I consult it at least six or seven times each working day, for English is a language that can never be mastered.* [*Even though I have studied English for decades I am constantly surprised to find new definitions I have not known: ‘panoply’ meaning ‘a full set of armor’, ‘calendar’ meaning ‘a printed index to a jumbled group of related manuscripts or papers’. —Chapter IX “Intellectual Equipment”, page 306”

WritingWordsDefinitionsSentencesVocabularyDictionaryJargonSyntaxHow To WriteWording
Book:The World Is My Home: A Memoir
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“The police never saw a noun they didn't want to turn into a verb, so it quickly became "to action", as in you action me to undertake a Falcon assessment, I action a Falcon assessment, a Falcon assessment has been actioned and we all action in a yellow submarine, a yellow submarine, a yellow submarine. This, to review a major inqurity is to review the list of "actions" and their consequences, in the hope that you'll spot something that thirty-odd highly trained and experienced detectives didn't.”

GrammarJargonPolicing
Book:Foxglove Summer
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“Psychobabble is... a set of repetitive verbal formalities that kills off the very spontaneity, candor, and understanding it pretends to promote. It's an idiom that reduces psychological insight to a collection of standardized observations, that provides a frozen lexicon to deal with an infinite variety of problems.”

ProblemLanguageUnderstandingDealsInfiniteInsightPsychologicalObservationVarietyCollectionsFrozenSpontaneityCandorRepetitiveJargonIdiomFormalityLexicon
Author:Richard Rosen
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“I was instructed long ago by a wise editor, "If you understand something you can explain it so that almost anyone can understand it. If you don't, you won't be able to understand your own explanation." That is why 90% of academic film theory is bullshit. Jargon is the last refuge of the scoundrel.”

IfsLongAbleLastsFilmWiseTheoryExplanationEditorsAcademicLong AgoRefugeBullshitScoundrelsJargon
Book:Roger Ebert's Movie Yearbook 2010
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“A jargon form'd from the lost language, wit, Confounded in that Babel of the pit; Form'd by diseased conceptions, weak and wild, Sick lust of souls, and an abortive child; Born between whores and fops, by lewd compacts, Before the play, or else between the acts; Nor wonder, if from such polluted minds Should spring such short and transitory kinds.”

IfsShouldMindKindChildrenSoulPlayFormLostLanguageBornWonderSpringWeakSickWitLustConceptionPitsTransitoryJargonDiseasedBabel
Book:The Works of of the Rev. Jonathan Swift
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“You know, whenever women make imaginary female kingdoms in literature, they are always very permissive, to use the jargon word, and easy and generous and self-indulgent, like the relationships between women when there are no men around. They make each other presents, and they have little feasts, and nobody punishes anyone else. This is the female way of going along when there are no men about or when men are not in the ascendant.”

KnowsMenWayLittlesSelfUseLiteratureEasyFemaleKingdomsGenerousImaginaryJargonSelf Indulgent
Book:Putting questions differently: interviews with Doris Lessing, 1964-1994
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“We do not need French post-structuralism, whose pedantic jargon, clumsy convolutions, and prissy abstractions have spread throughout academe and the arts and are now blighting the most promising minds of the next generation. This is a major crisis if there ever was one, and every sensible person must help bring it to an end.”

IfsNeedsMindPersonsArtEndsHelpingNextGenerationsMajorsCrisisSpreadPostsSensibleAbstractionNext GenerationClumsyJargonPedanticStructuralism
Book:Sex, Art, and American Culture: Essays
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“But there are still many who continue to marvel at the wisdom of God in so planning the universe that big rivers run by great towns, and that death comes at the end of life instead of in the middle of it. Divest pleas ... of their semi-philosophic jargon, reduce his illustrations to homely similes, and he is marvelling at the wisdom of God who so planned things that the two extremities of a piece of wood should come at the ends instead of in the middle.”

ShouldStillsTwoEndsBigsRunningUniversePiecesAtheismMiddleRiversTownsWoodsPlanningSimileIllustrationEnd Of LifeJargonPhilosophicExtremityHomely
Author:Chapman Cohen
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“Angus Deaton has written a wonderful book, The Great Escape: Health, Wealth, and the Origins of Inequality. . . . Deaton's book is a magisterial overview of health, income, and wealth from the industrial revolution to the present, taking in countries poor and rich. Not just jargon-free but equation-free, the book is written with a beautifully lucid style. . . . [P]owerfully argued and convincing.”

BookCountryWealthPoorRichWonderfulWrittenStyleRevolutionIncomeInequalityEquationsConvincingIndustrial RevolutionJargonHealth WealthOverviewGreat Escape
Author:Michael Marmot
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“Accurate and just reasoning is the only catholic remedy, fitted for all persons and all dispositions; and is alone able to subvert that abstruse philosophy and metaphysical jargon, which, being mixed up with popular superstition, renders it in a manner impenetrable to careless reasoners, and gives it the air of science and wisdom.”

GivingPersonsReasonPhilosophyAbleAirCatholicReasoningSuperstitionsAccurateRemedyDispositionMetaphysicalCarelessJargon
Book:The Philosophical Works of David Hume: Including All the Essays, and Exhibiting the More Important Alterations and Corrections in the Successive Editions Pub. by the Author
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“How does one say in the jargon of musicology that my sould was pulled out of me and thrown up in the air, to be tossed about by the music. How does one say that I breathed, that I existed, in harmony with the ups and downs of those notes. What kind of notes both elevate and cast down, exalt and crush?”

KindDoeAirHarmonyNotesCastsCrushThrownUps & DownsJargonUp In The Air
Book:The Facts Behind the Helsinki Roccamatios
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