Quotes About Semantics

Terminological infelicities have a way of breeding conceptual confusion.

The language in which we express our ideas has a strong influence on our thought processes.

The word "fine" is the greatest abbreviation and obviously wrong.

A word (...) is never the destination, merely a signpost in its general direction; and whatever (...) body that destination finally acquires owes quite as much to the reader as to the writer.

The whole idea of "connections" between language and reality is a false one.

Every misunderstanding has at its center a breakdown of language.

Las palabras no se parecen a las cosas que designan (Maurice Merleau-Ponty)

Letters are restless, hungry for an image, and the image is thirsty for a meaning.

Words are vehicles of ideas, and unless they are understood properly misunderstanding is inevitable.

Sometimes finish and end don't mean the same thing.

Wow, really?" I said, before I could stop myself. "I used the wrong word, didn't I," Davidson said, looking at me. "I can never remember if 'clank' or 'threep' is the word I'm not supposed to be using today.

Words pick up flavors and odors like butter in a refrigerator.

All our work, our whole life is a matter of semantics, because words are the tools with which we work, the material out of which laws are made, out of which the Constitution was written. Everything depends on our understanding of them.

A lot of words in English confuse the idea of life and electricity, like the word livewire.

Words do not change their meanings so drastically in the course of centuries as, in our minds, names do in the course of a year or two.

Side note: invalid. Whoever invented that word, and made it the same word as not-valid? That person sucked.

The words democracy, socialism, freedom, patriotic, realistic, justice have each of them several different meanings which cannot be reconciled with one another.

Why is it, when a door is open it's ajar, but when a jar is open, it's not a door?

It's really funny, because if you make up words, then people project their own meanings onto it, which I find interesting.

I think what's really amazing is that given the scale of the web and getting the compute power we have today, we're starting to see things that appear intelligent but actually aren't semantically intelligent.

Words lose their meaning when you look at them too long. 'God.' 'Science.' Meaning.

Language is intrinsically political, as how we talk about something conditions how we think about it,

The difference between the almost right word and the right word is really a large matter — it's the difference between the lightning bug and the lightning.

The question of whether computers can think is like the question of whether submarines can swim.