Menu

 Authors
A B C D E F
G H I J K L
M N O P Q R
S T U V W S
Y Z
Get Socialize
My Account
Make Free Wallpaper

59 Linguist Quotes

It's dangerous when people are willing to give up their privacy.

Dangerous People Privacy Willing
  Favorite Make wallpaper
Wanton killing of innocent civilians is terrorism, not a war against terrorism.
Wanton Killing Civilians Terrorism
  Favorite Make wallpaper

The major advances in speed of communication and ability to interact took place more than a century ago. The shift from sailing ships to telegraph was far more radical than that from telephone to email!

Major Communication Interact Century
  Favorite Make wallpaper

There are two problems for our species' survival - nuclear war and environmental catastrophe - and we're hurtling towards them. Knowingly.

Problems Survival Nuclear Catastrophe
  Favorite Make wallpaper

If you ask the CEO of some major corporation what he does, he will say, in all honesty, that he is slaving 20 hours a day to provide his customers with the best goods or services he can and creating the best possible working conditions for his employees.

Corporation Honesty Creating Conditions
  Favorite Make wallpaper
It's a near miracle that nuclear war has so far been avoided.
Miracle Nuclear War Avoided
  Favorite Make wallpaper

Either you repeat the same conventional doctrines everybody is saying, or else you say something true, and it will sound like it's from Neptune.

Conventional Doctrine True Neptune
  Favorite Make wallpaper

States are not moral agents, people are, and can impose moral standards on powerful institutions.

State People Moral Institutions
  Favorite Make wallpaper

If the Nuremberg laws were applied, then every post-war American president would have been hanged.

Nuremberg Post-war American President
  Favorite Make wallpaper
Any dictator would admire the uniformity and obedience of the U.S. media.
Dictator Admire Uniformity Obedience
  Favorite Make wallpaper

We can, for example, be fairly confident that either there will be a world without war or there won't be a world - at least, a world inhabited by creatures other than bacteria and beetles, with some scattering of others.

Example Fairly Confident Inhabited
  Favorite Make wallpaper

I have often thought that if a rational Fascist dictatorship were to exist, then it would choose the American system.

Thought Rational Dictatorship American
  Favorite Make wallpaper

Unlimited economic growth has the marvelous quality of stilling discontent while maintaining privilege, a fact that has not gone unnoticed among liberal economists.

Unlimited Growth Privilege Unnoticed
  Favorite Make wallpaper

The principle that human nature, in its psychological aspects, is nothing more than a product of history and given social relations removes all barriers to coercion and manipulation by the powerful.

Principle Psychological Product History
  Favorite Make wallpaper

Language is a process of free creation; its laws and principles are fixed, but the manner in which the principles of generation are used is free and infinitely varied. Even the interpretation and use of words involves a process of free creation.

Language Principles Generation Interpretation
  Favorite Make wallpaper
The intellectual tradition is one of servility to power, and if I didn't betray it I'd be ashamed of myself.
Intellectual Sevility Power Betray
  Favorite Make wallpaper

All over the place, from the popular culture to the propaganda system, there is constant pressure to make people feel that they are helpless, that the only role they can have is to ratify decisions and to consume.

Popular Propaganda Pressure Helpless
  Favorite Make wallpaper

Education must provide the opportunities for self-fulfillment; it can at best provide a rich and challenging environment for the individual to explore, in his own way.

Education Self-fulfilment Environment Explore
  Favorite Make wallpaper

In this possibly terminal phase of human existence, democracy and freedom are more than just ideals to be valued - they may be essential to survival.

Terminal Existence Democracy Ideals
  Favorite Make wallpaper
Propaganda is to a democracy what the bludgeon is to a totalitarian state.
Propaganda Democracy Bludgeon Totalitarian
  Favorite Make wallpaper

The only justification for repressive institutions is material and cultural deficit. But such institutions, at certain stages of history, perpetuate and produce such a deficit, and even threaten human survival.

Justification Cultural Deficit Survival
  Favorite Make wallpaper

The more you can increase fear of drugs and crime, welfare mothers, immigrants and aliens, the more you control all the people.

Increase Drug Crime Immigrants
  Favorite Make wallpaper

Resistance is feasible even for those who are not heroes by nature, and it is an obligation, I believe, for those who fear the consequences and detest the reality of the attempt to impose American hegemony.

Resistance Detest Reality Hegemony
  Favorite Make wallpaper
The Bible is one of the most genocidal books in history.
Bible Genocidal History
  Favorite Make wallpaper

Everybody's worried about stopping terrorism. Well, there's a really easy way: stop participating in it.

Terrorism Easy Participating
  Favorite Make wallpaper

To some degree it matters who's in office, but it matters more how much pressure they're under from the public.

Degree Office Pressure Public
  Favorite Make wallpaper

You never need an argument against the use of violence, you need an argument for it.

Argument Violence
  Favorite Make wallpaper
Human language appears to be a unique phenomenon, without significant analogue in the animal world.
Human Language Phenomenon Analogue
  Favorite Make wallpaper

The people who were honored in the Bible were the false prophets. It was the ones we call the prophets who were jailed and driven into the desert.

Honored Bible Prophets Jailed
  Favorite Make wallpaper

How people themselves perceive what they are doing is not a question that interests me.

People Perceive Question Interest
  Favorite Make wallpaper
Governments don't control people like they used to.
Governments Control People
  Favorite Make wallpaper

The man's world must become a man's and a woman's world. Why are we afraid?

Man World Woman Afraid
  Favorite Make wallpaper

My one aim and concentrated purpose shall be and is to show that women can learn, can reason, can compete with men in the grand fields of literature and science . . .

Aim Concentrated Women Learn
  Favorite Make wallpaper

It is the next step forward on the path to the sunrise, and the sun is rising over a new heaven and a new earth.

Sunrise Next Step Heaven
  Favorite Make wallpaper

. . . a woman can be a woman and a true one without having all her time engrossed by dress and society.

Woman True Engrossed Dress
  Favorite Make wallpaper

I wish the air were pure oxygen, and then as it says in our chemistry book, our life would sweep through its fevered burning course in a few hours and we would live in a perfect delirium of excitement and would die vibrating with passion, for anything would be better than this lazy sluggish life.

Passion Oxygen Chemistry Book
  Favorite Make wallpaper

One man's mind differs from another man's mind far more widely than all women's minds differ from all men.

Man Minds Differ Widely
  Favorite Make wallpaper

We are not by nature cruel.

Cruel We By Nature
  Favorite Make wallpaper

There are works of literature whose influence is strong but indirect because it is mediated through the whole of the culture rather than immediately through imitation. Wordsworth is the case that comes to mind.

Because Case Culture Imitation
  Favorite Make wallpaper

The writers who have the deepest influence on one are those one reads in ones more impressionable, early life, and often it is the more youthful works of those writers that leave the deepest imprint.

Deepest Early Early Life Imprint
  Favorite Make wallpaper

The most important of all rights is the right to life, and I cannot foresee a day when domesticated animals will be granted that right in law.

Animals Cannot Day Domesticated
  Favorite Make wallpaper
The mode of consciousness of nonhuman species is quite different from human consciousness.
Consciousness Different Human Human Consciousness
  Favorite Make wallpaper

The idea of writer as sage is pretty much dead today. I would certainly feel very uncomfortable in the role.

Certainly Dead Feel Idea
  Favorite Make wallpaper

Strictly speaking, my interest is not in legal rights for animals but in a change of heart towards animals.

Animals Change Heart Interest
  Favorite Make wallpaper
In order to be cruel we have to close our hearts to the suffering of the other.
Close Cruel Hearts Order
  Favorite Make wallpaper

If there were a better, clearer, shorter way of saying what the fiction says, then why not scrap the fiction?

Better Clearer Fiction Saying
  Favorite Make wallpaper

If it is indeed impossible - or at least very difficult - to inhabit the consciousness of an animal, then in writing about animals there is a temptation to project upon them feelings and thoughts that may belong only to our own human mind and heart.

About Animal Animals Belong
  Favorite Make wallpaper
I tend to resist invitations to interpret my own fiction.
Fiction Interpret My Own Own
  Favorite Make wallpaper

I see no marks of Wordsworths style of writing or style of thinking in my own work, yet Wordsworth is a constant presence when I write about human beings and their relations to the natural world.

About Beings Constant Human
  Favorite Make wallpaper

I say that I represent this movement because my intellectual allegiances are clearly European, not African.

African Because Clearly European
  Favorite Make wallpaper