It is a luxury to be understood.
—Ralph Waldo Emerson, 1831Quotes
We should have a great many fewer disputes in the world if words were taken for what they are, the signs of our ideas only, and not for things themselves.
—John Locke, 1690Newspapers always excite curiosity. No one ever lays one down without a feeling of disappointment.
—Charles Lamb, 1833I have often repented speaking, but never of holding my tongue.
—Xenocrates, c. 350 BCSlang is as old as speech and the congregating together of people in cities. It is the result of crowding and excitement and artificial life.
—John Camden Hotten, 1859Slang is a language that rolls up its sleeves, spits on its hands, and goes to work.
—Carl Sandburg, 1959A good newspaper, I suppose, is a nation talking to itself.
—Arthur Miller, 1961Language ought to be the joint creation of poets and manual workers.
—George Orwell, 1944In the case of news, we should always wait for the sacrament of confirmation.
—Voltaire, 1764Every man is surrounded by a neighborhood of voluntary spies.
—Jane Austen, 1818Speak and speed; the close mouth catches no flies.
—Benjamin Franklin, c. 1732Man is the one name belonging to every nation upon earth: there is one soul and many tongues, one spirit and various sounds; every country has its own speech, but the subjects of speech are common to all.
—Tertullian, c. 217The newspaper is the natural enemy of the book, as the whore is of the decent woman.
—Edmond and Jules de Goncourt, 1858