Best term & language Quotes | Short & Famous Sayings

“The new painters do not propose, any more than did their predecessors, to be geometers. But it may be said that geometry is to the plastic arts what grammar is to the art of the writer. Today, scholars no longer limit themselves to the three dimensions of Euclid. The painters have been lead quite naturally, one might say by intuition, to preoccupy themselves with the new possibilities of spatial measurement which, in the language of the modern studios, are designated by the term fourth dimension.”

“Letters to the editors of English and American newspapers often contain expressions of horror about the new terms that creep into the language, and these expressions are usually accompanied by dire predictions about ruination of the mother tongue.”

Mother Language Term Expression Horror Letters Tongue Newspapers Editors Predictions Creeps Mother Tongue

Book:Word Play: What Happens When People Talk

Source: Word Play: What Happens When People Talk

“Evolution is a theory in a special philosophical sense of science, but in terms of ordinary laymen's use of language, it's a fact, .. Evolution is a fact in the same sense that it's a fact that the Earth is round and not flat, [that] the Earth goes round the Sun. Both those are also theories, but they're theories that have never been disproved and never will be disproved.”

Facts Use Earth Language Term Sun Special Theory Evolution Ordinary Philosophical Rounds Flats Layman Use Of Language

Author:Richard Dawkins

“When I [first] went to university, I was doing foreign languages, because I had done them since I was 13 years old. I had done French and German. I picked up Italian, just sort of blasted through the exams, [and then] took off overseas, because I wanted to be an actor. I thought, "I'm just not academic." I'm not very competitive, in terms of acting. But since going back to university, I've realized, I am highly competitive.”

Years Firsts Done Wanted Actors Language Term Acting University Italian Academic Exam Foreign Language

Author:Nick Offerman

“H. L Mencken's Dictionary of the American Language supplies a long list of slang terms for being drunk, but the Irish are no slouches, either. They're spannered, rat-arsed, cabbaged, and hammered; ruined, legless, scorched, and blottoed; or simply trolleyed or sloshed. In Kerry, you're said to be flamin'; in Waterford, you're in the horrors; and in Cavan, you've gone baloobas, a tough one to wrap your tongue around if you ARE baloobas. In Donegal, you're steamin', while the afflicted in Limerick are out of their tree.”

Ifs Long Said Language Term Gone Tree Horror Tough Tongue Lists Drunk Rats Ruined Wraps Dictionary Supplies Slang Hammered Limerick Being Drunk American Language

Author:Bill Barich

“In truth, the best long-term explanations about our ancient counterparts can be found in the paintings, sculpture, crafts, tools of utility, language and architecture left behind. These are the building blocks of civilization we call culture. These are what we call 'the arts.”

“You have to seduce the reader, manipulate their mind and heart, listen to the music of language. I sometimes think of prose as music, in terms of its rhythms and dynamics, the way you compress and expand the attention of a reader over a sentence, the way the tempo pushes you towards an image or sensation. We want an intense experience, so that we can forget ourselves when we enter the world of the book. When you are reading, the physical object of the book should disappear from your hands.”

“In a very real sense, the Constitution is our compact with history . . . [but] the Constitution can maintain that compact and serve as the lodestar of our political system only if its terms are binding on us. To the extent we depart from the document's language and rely instead on generalities that we see written between the lines, we rob the Constitution of its binding force and give free reign to the fashions and passions of the day.”

Ifs Giving Real Political Passion Language Force Term Lines Written Fashion Constitution Rely Documents Reign Political Systems Binding Compact Generalities Between The Lines

Author:Alex Kozinski

“What does purpose mean? It means the deepest desire for our short lives to mean something. . . . To speak a language of purpose is to return to first principles and to be able to answer, in plain English, the plain questions of Why? Why should we chip in to help someone else? Why should we defer gratification? Why should we care about the long term? Why should we trust anyone who seems to be limiting our ability to do what we want?”

Want Should Firsts Mean Long Doe Helping Seems Care Able Desire Purpose Speak Language Term Ability Answers Principles Return Intention Long Term Chips Gratification Short Life Plain English

Author:Eric Liu

“A scholar like myself who is not a Sinologist and yet ventures the proposition that Chinese languages should be rewritten in the Greek alphabet (or "Romanized", to use the current term) is treading on uncharted territory (for him) and does so at his peril.”

Should Doe Use Language Term Currents Chinese Greek Territory Scholar Venture Propositions Peril Alphabet Uncharted Treading Uncharted Territory Chinese Language

Author:Eric A. Havelock

“The most meaningless term in the English language is "I take full responsibility." When a politician utters those words it means absolutely nothing.”

Mean Language Term Responsibility Politician Meaningless English Language Absolutely Nothing

Author:Bernard Goldberg

“I was always interested in language. I thought, why not? If a painting, by the normal definition of the term, is paint on canvas, why can't it be painted words on canvas?”

Ifs Language Term Painting Normal Paint Definitions Why Not Canvas

Author:John Baldessari

“Every true American likes to think in terms of thousands and millions. The word 'million' is probably the most pleasure-giving vocable in the language.”

Thinking Giving Language Term Pleasure Millions United States Likes Very True

Author:Agnes Repplier

“Our language, once homely and colloquial, seeks to aggrandize our meanest activities with polysyllabic terms or it retreats from frankness into a stammering verbosity.”

Language Term Activity Retreat Homely Frankness Stammering

Book:Occasional prose

Source: Occasional prose

“To me, the term 'middle-class' connotes a safe, comfortable, middle-of-the road policy. Above all, our language is 'middle-class' in the middle of our road. To drive it to one side or the other or even off the road, is the noblest task of the future.”

Language Sides Term Class Middle Policy Safe Comfortable Tasks Middle Class Middle Of The Road

Author:Christian Morgenstern

“Not only the individual experience slowly acquired, but the accumulated experience of the race, organized in language, condensed in instruments and axioms, and in what may be called the inherited intuitions--these form the multiple unity which is expressed in the abstract term "experience.”

May Form Individual Language Term Race Experience Instruments Unity Intuition Abstract Organized Multiple Axioms

Book:Problems of Life and Mind: v.1-2 . The foundations of a creed

Source: Problems of Life and Mind: v.1-2 . The foundations of a creed

“In many patriarchies, language, as well as cultural tradition, reserve the human condition for the male. With the Indo-European languages this is a nearly inescapable habit of mind, for despite all the customary pretense that 'man' and 'humanity' are terms which apply equally to both sexes, the fact is hardly obscured that in practice, general application favors the male far more often than the female as referent, or even sole referent, for such designations.”

“David Fincher is probably the best comprehensive director in terms of being a manger of a process that must drive forward. He has such confident command of cinema language and visual language and script and performance. He knows more about f-stops than any cameraman, he knows more about lighting than any gaffer, he is a wonderful writer, and he can give you a good line reading. Under pressure, he is the kind of guy who you will just dive in with and trust and follow because his vision is so intense.”

“I've had a fair amount of experience with snakes, and I find them to be pretty honest in terms of how you read their body language and emotions. They'll tell you when they're grumpy. They'll tell you when they're okay.”

Body Language Term Emotion Honest Amount Fairs Okay Snakes Body Language Grumpy

Author:Dominic Monaghan

“Tis an admirable thing to see how some people will labour to find out terms that may obscure a plain sense, like a gentleman I knew, who would never say 'the weather grew cold,' but that 'winter begins to salute us.' I have no patience for such coxcombs.”

People May Language Term Grew Cold Speech Winter Weather Gentleman Labour Obscure Admirable Salute No Patience I Have No Patience

Author:Dorothy Osborne

“The ambiguities of language, both in terms of vocabulary and syntax, are fascinating: how important connotation is, what is lost and what is gained in the linguistic transition.”

Important Literature Lost Language Term Fascinating Transition Vocabulary Ambiguity Linguistics Connotation Syntax

Author:Marilyn Hacker

“The ultimate law of language is, dare we say, that nothing can ever reside in a single term. This is a direct consequence of the fact that linguistic signs are unrelated to what they designate and that, therefore, 'a' cannot designate anything without the the aid of 'b' and vice versa, or, in other words, that both have value only by the difference between them.”

Facts Law Values Language Term Differences Consequence Direct Ultimate Vices Dare Aids Vice Versa

Author:Ferdinand de Saussure

“Metaphor is pervasive in everyday life, not just in language but in thought and action. Our ordinary conceptual system, in terms of which we both think and act, is fundamentally metaphorical in nature.”

Thinking Action Language Term Ordinary Everyday Metaphor Everyday Life Metaphorical Thoughts And Actions

Book:Metaphors We Live By

Source: Metaphors We Live By

“The system should speak the users' language, with words, phrases and concepts familiar to the user, rather than system-oriented terms. Follow real-world conventions, making information appear in a natural and logical order.”

World Should Real Order Speak Language Term Natural Information Concepts Familiar Phrases Logical Real World Conventions Users

Author:Jakob Nielsen

“So while you're getting ripped apart head to toe as you fall into a black hole, you will also extrude through the fabric of space and time, like toothpaste squeezed through a tube. To all the words in the English language that describe ways to die (e.g., homicide, suicide, electrocution, suffocation, starvation) we add the term spaghettification.”

Way Science Dies Fall Language Black Term Space Suicide Add Holes Fabric Toes Time And Space English Language Starvation Tubes Ripped Black Hole Homicide Toothpaste

Author:Neil deGrasse Tyson

“Reversing a proposition rearranges its terms, but still keeps out new terms.”

Stills Language Term Propositions

Author:Mason Cooley

“But the nature of our civilized minds is so detached from the senses, even in the vulgar, by abstractions corresponding to all theabstract terms our languages abound in, and so refined by the art of writing, and as it were spiritualized by the use of numbers, because even the vulgar know how to count and reckon, that it is naturally beyond our power to form the vast image of this mistress called "Sympathetic Nature.”

Knows Writing Mind Art Use Form Language Term Numbers Know How Senses Civilized Vulgar Abstraction Mistress Sympathetic Refined Detached Corresponding Art Of Writing

Author:Giambattista Vico

“The very natural tendency to use terms derived from traditional grammar like verb, noun, adjective, passive voice, in describing languages outside of Indo-European is fraught with grave possibilities of misunderstanding.”

Use Language Voice Term Natural Possibility Graves Traditional Tendencies Passive Misunderstanding Grammar Describing Verbs Adjectives Nouns Passive Voice

Book:Language, Thought, and Reality: Selected Writings of Benjamin Lee Whorf

Source: Language, Thought, and Reality: Selected Writings of Benjamin Lee Whorf

“English general and singular terms, identity, quantification, and the whole bag of ontological tricks may be correlated with elements of the native language in any of various mutually incompatible ways, each compatible with all possible linguistic data, and none preferable to another save as favored by a rationalization of the native language that is simple and natural to us.”

Way May Whole Language Term Natural Simple Identity Elements Various Tricks Data Native Bags Compatible Native Language

Book:Quintessence: Basic Readings from the Philosophy of W.V. Quine

Source: Quintessence: Basic Readings from the Philosophy of W.V. Quine

“The strategy of semantic ascent is that it carries the discussion into a domain where both parties are better agreed on the objects (viz., words) and on the main terms connecting them. Words, or their inscriptions, unlike points, miles, classes and the rest, are tangible objects of the size so popular in the marketplace, where men of unlike conceptual schemes communicate at their best. The strategy is one of ascending to a common part of two fundamentally disparate conceptual schemes, the better to discuss the disparate foundations. No wonder it helps in philosophy.”

“Next, 'real' is what we may call a trouser-word. It is usually thought, and I dare say usually rightly thought, that what one might call the affirmative use of a term is basic--that, to understand 'x,' we need to know what it is to be x, or to be an x, and that knowing this apprises us of what it is not to be x, not to be an x. But with 'real' (as we briefly noted earlier) it is the negative use that wears the trousers.”

Knows Needs May Real Use Might Next Language Term Knowing Negative Dare Affirmative Trousers

Author:J. L. Austin

“When a language advances and adds a third term to its lexicon for color, the third term is always red.”

Language Term Color Red Thirds Add Lexicon

Book:The Organized Mind: Thinking Straight in the Age of Information Overload

Source: The Organized Mind: Thinking Straight in the Age of Information Overload

“First it must be known that only a spoken word or a conventional sign is an equivocal or univocal term; therefore a mental contentor concept is, strictly speaking, neither equivocal nor univocal.”

Firsts Language Term Known Concepts Conventional Spoken Word

Author:William of Ockham

“Here the term 'language-game' is meant to bring into prominence the fact that the speaking of language is part of an activity, of a form of life.”

Facts Form Games Language Term Activity Prominence

Author:Ludwig Wittgenstein

“The language of commerce has been engineered to describe the overt purpose of a thing, but cannot encompass fringe benefits or peripheral pleasures. It weighs the obvious against what in its terms are incomprehensible. When I drive from here to there, speed, privacy, control, and safety are easy to claim. When I walk, what happens is more vague, more ambiguous-and in many circumstances much richer. I am out in the world. It's exercise, though not so quantifiably as on a treadmill in a gym with a digital readout.”

“Non-co-operation is a movement intended to invite Englishmen to co-operate with us on honourable terms or retire from our land.”

Language Term Land Movement Operations Invites Retiring English Language Englishmen

Book:Volume of prefaces

Source: Volume of prefaces

“It's so rich as a trope - the whole idea of the road and it being in terms of language, being an active experience.”

Ideas Whole Language Term Rich Active Tropes

Author:Anne Waldman

“As the writer, you can choose the word that seems best in terms of meaning, nuance, sound, etc. As the translator you are unlikely to find a word in your language that exactly matches, so that you are always making a decision about which meaning or nuance to choose, or emphasize, over the others.”

Seems Language Sound Term Decision Etc Unlikely Nuance Translators

Author:Ann Goldstein

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