Quotes About Language

When you write in prose you say what you mean. When you write in rhyme you say what you must.

Poetry can do a lot of things to people. I mean it can improve your imagination. It can take you to new places. It can give you this incredible form of verbal pleasure.

... yes I speak a different language - the dark fire of poetry - it flutters and gutters in tune with the mood...

So few people read poetry. That's sad, isn't it?

The learned fool writes his nonsense in better language than the unlearned, but it is still nonsense.

Politicians don't lie, they misspeak. And they don't steal, they mispocket.

What I think the political correctness debate is really about is the power to be able to define. The definers want the power to name. And the defined are now taking that power away from them.

To speak a language is to take on a world, a culture.

In the era of imperialism, businessmen became politicians and were acclaimed as statesmen, while statesmen were taken seriously only if they talked the language of succcessful businessmen.

Everybody gets a little dose of Shakespeare. He's the greatest playwright in the English language, but his politics are fairly square.

If the word has the potency to revive and make us free, it has also the power to bind, imprison and destroy.

You campaign in poetry. You govern in prose.

I was recently on a tour of Latin America, and the only regret I have was that I didn't study Latin harder in school so I could converse with those people.

I've done reasonably well over the last 10 years because I took the strategy of language and politics and applied it to the corporate world, which has never been done before.

Political correctness? In my humor, I never talk about politics. I was never much into all that.

The language of politics is poetry, not prose. Jackson is poetry. Cuomo is poetry. Dukakis is a word processor.

If you talk you always end up with politics, it gets nowhere. I mean man it's strictly from the soft typewriter.

It is part of politics to make things look better than they really are. What is a spin doctor but a serial euphemiser?

If the Irish programme did not insist on the Irish language I suppose I could call myself a nationalist. As it is, I am content torecognize myself an exile: and, prophetically, a repudiated one.

Before I got into politics, I wanted to be a missionary to people in the Middle East. I thought it would be better to speak with them in their own language.

He is so aware of being politically correct he refers to a taco as Hispanic food.

Words mean more than what is set down on paper. It takes the human voice to infuse them with deeper meaning.

The name we give to something shapes our attitude toward it.

Watch your thoughts, they become words.