Vocabulary quotes

Vocabulary

410 quotes on this topic — from poets, philosophers, and thinkers across history.

410 quotes

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Vocabulary quotes (page 2 of 21)

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Robert A. Heinlein Science Fiction Author
Vocabulary

"English is the largest of human tongues, with several times the vocabulary of the second largest language -- this alone made it inevitable that English would eventually become, as it did, the lingua franca of this planet, for it is thereby the richest and most flexible -- despite its barbaric accretions . . . or, I should say, because of its barbaric accretions. English swallows up anything that comes its way, makes English out of it."

Way Tongue Vocabulary
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Malcolm X Civil Rights Activist, Minister
Vocabulary

"It’ll be the ballot or it’ll be the bullet. It’ll be liberty or it’ll be death. And if you’re not ready to pay that price don’t use the word freedom in your vocabulary."

Use Liberty Vocabulary
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Tom Waits Singer-songwriter, Actor
Vocabulary

"I always had a great appreciation for jazz, but I'm a very pedestrian musician. I get by. I like to think that my main instrument is vocabulary."

Thinking Appreciation Vocabulary
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Chinua Achebe Novelist, Poet
Vocabulary

"In the vocabulary of certain radical theorists contradictions are given the status of some deadly disease to which their opponents alone can succumb. But contradictions are the very stuff of life. If there had been a little dash of contradiction among the Gadarene swine some of them might have been saved from drowning."

Disease Opponents Vocabulary
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Pablo Neruda Poet, Diplomat
Vocabulary

"As slippery as smooth grapes, words exploding in the light like dormant seeds waiting in the vaults of vocabulary, alive again, and giving life: once again the heart distills them."

Heart Light Vocabulary
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Seth Godin Author, Entrepreneur
Vocabulary

"One reason I encourage people to blog is that the act of doing it stretches your available vocabulary and hones a new voice."

People Voice Vocabulary
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Ursula K. Le Guin Author, Poet, Essayist
Vocabulary

"I suppose the most important thing, the heaviest single factor in one's life, is whether one's born male or female. In most societies it determines one's expectations, activities, outlook, ethics, manners - almost everything. Vocabulary. Semiotic usages. Clothing. Even food. Women... women tend to eat less... It's extremely hard to separate the innate differences from the learned ones. Even where women participate equally with men in the society, they still after all do all the childbearing, and so most of the child-rearing."

Men Children Vocabulary
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Jorge Luis Borges Writer, Poet
Vocabulary

"In the critic's vocabulary, the word "precursor" is indispensable, but it should be cleansed of all connotations of polemic or rivalry. The fact is that every writer creates his own precursors. His work modifies our conception of the past, as it will modify the future." -- Essay: "Kafka and his Precursors"

Past Facts Vocabulary
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Joseph Brodsky Poet, Essayist
Vocabulary

"What concerns me is that man, unable to articulate, to express himself adequately, reverts to action. Since the vocabulary of action is limited, as it were, to his body, he is bound to act violently, extending his vocabulary with a weapon where there should have been an adjective."

Men Should Have Vocabulary
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Kurt Vonnegut Novelist, Satirist
Vocabulary

"I just don't think people get off on language anymore. Language used to be an elevated art. It used to be for people what music can be. But people don't learn to do that anymore, so eloquence is merely a matter of waste. Who needs a good vocabulary and proper English? Eloquence - it's dead and who needs it?"

Thinking Art Vocabulary
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D. A. Carson Theologian
Vocabulary

"Others have questions about how it is that God and human beings can both be speaking through the one document such that you can see and read the personalities of the human authors with their individual vocabularies and literary genres, and yet this is nevertheless the word of God. How can that be? This is quite a contrast with Islam, for example, which holds that the Koran has been dictated in Arabic by God and as a result Mohammed is nothing more than the one who memorizes the word so as to pass it on. There is nothing of human contribution."

Personality Vocabulary Literary Genre
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