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Semantics Quotes

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Semantics Quotes

“So long as mathematicians can impose up-and-down semantics upon students while trafficking personally in the non-up-and-down advantages of their concise statements, they can impose upon the ignorance of man a monopoly of access to accurate processing of information and can fool even themselves by thought habits governing the becoming behavior of professional specialists, by disclaiming the necessity of, or responsibility for, comprehensive adjustment of the a priori thought to total reality of universal principles.”

MenLongRealityResponsibilityPrinciplesInformationStudentsIgnoranceFoolBecomingHabitBehaviorAdvantageUniversalAccessStatementsAccurateMathematicianMonopolyUp And DownGoverningComprehensiveAdjustmentSpecialistsProcessingTraffickingConciseSemantics
Author:R. Buckminster Fuller
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“For the individual, as I can testify, a brief grounding in semantics, besides making philosophy unreadable, makes unreadable most political speeches, classical economic theory, after-dinner oratory, diplomatic notes, newspaper editorials, treatises on pedagogics and education, expert financial comment, dissertations on money and credit, accounts of debates, and Great Thoughts from Great Thinkers in general. You would be surprised at the amount of time this saves.”

I CanPhilosophyWould BePoliticalIndividualEconomicTheoryAmountSpeechAccountsNotesFinancialCreditDinnerDebateNewspapersExpertsCommentThinkerDiplomaticEditorialsOratoryGroundingSemanticsEconomic TheoryGreat ThinkersDissertationPolitical Speeches
Book:Tyranny of Words
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“It is always just telling a story, regardless of the age of the reader. Except, if I'm writing something for kids, I know there has to be hope. I don't necessarily feel that responsibility for adults, but I emphatically feel it for children. That's the only difference. There's no syntax difference. There's no semantics difference. There's no thematic difference.”

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Author:Kate DiCamillo
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“Semantics is about the relation of words to thoughts, but it also about the relation of words to other human concerns. Semantics is about the relation of words to reality - the way that speakers commit themselves to a shared understanding of the truth, and the way their thoughts are anchored to things and situations in the world.”

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Book:The Stuff of Thought: Language as a Window into Human Nature
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“Faith is a continuum, and we each fall on that line where we may. By attempting to rigidly classify ethereal concepts like faith, we end up debating semantics to the point where we entirely miss the obvious - that is, that we are all trying to decipher life's big mysteries, and we're each following our own paths of enlightenment.”

TryingMayEndsBigsFallLinesPathMysteryMissingEnlightenmentConceptsObviousFollowingAttemptingContinuumEtherealDecipherSemantics
Author:Dan Brown
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“I heard you're campaigning on my behalf." He walked over to me. "That wouldn't be because you'd miss me too much if I were gone,would it?" "Don't be absurd," I scoffed. "I don't condone murder, even for people like you." "People like me,huh?" He cocked an eyebrow. "You mean devilishly handsome, debonair young men who come to sweep rebellious princesses of their feet?" "You came to kidnap me, not sweep me off my feet," I said,but he waved his hand at the idea. "Semantics.”

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Book:Trylle: The Complete Trilogy
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“... semantics ... is a sober and modest discipline which has no pretensions of being a universal patent-medicine for all the ills and diseases of mankind, whether imaginary or real. You will not find in semantics any remedy for decayed teeth or illusions of grandeur or class conflict. Nor is semantics a device for establishing that everyone except the speaker and his friends is speaking nonsense”

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Author:Alfred Tarski
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“It seemed to a number of philosophers of language, myself included, that we should attempt to achieve a unification of Chomsky's syntax, with the results of the researches that were going on in semantics and pragmatics. I believe that this effort has proven to be a failure. Though Chomsky did indeed revolutionize the subject of linguistics, it is not at all clear, at the end the century, what the solid results of this revolution are. As far as I can tell there is not a single rule of syntax that all, or even most, competent linguists are prepared to agree is a rule.”

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Author:John Searle
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“Anti-Zionists, last of all, exhibit a distaste for certain words. It was Thomas Hobbes who, anticipating semantics, pointed out that words are counters, not coins; that the wise man looks through them to reality. This counsel many anti-Zionists seem to have neglected. They are especially disturbed by the two nouns nationalism and commonwealth, and by the adjective political. And yet these terms on examination are not at all upsetting.”

MenLooksTwoRealitySeemsLastsPoliticalCertainTermWiseIsraelUpsetNationalismCoinsExaminationNeglectedDisturbedExhibitsAdjectivesCommonwealthZionistNounsHobbesDistasteSemantics
Author:Milton Steinberg
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