Archive

Quotes

Whereof one cannot speak, thereof one must be silent.

—Ludwig Wittgenstein, 1921

Information can tell us everything. It has all the answers. But they are answers to questions we have not asked, and which doubtless don’t even arise.

—Jean Baudrillard, c. 1987

I have often repented speaking, but never of holding my tongue.

—Xenocrates, c. 350 BC

A good newspaper, I suppose, is a nation talking to itself.

—Arthur Miller, 1961

Slang is a language that rolls up its sleeves, spits on its hands, and goes to work.

—Carl Sandburg, 1959

I live by good soup, and not on fine language.

—Molière, 1672

The gift of a common tongue is a priceless inheritance and it may well some day become the foundation of a common citizenship.

—Winston Churchill, 1943

Speak and speed; the close mouth catches no flies.

—Benjamin Franklin, c. 1732

Every man is surrounded by a neighborhood of voluntary spies.

—Jane Austen, 1818

The newspaper is the natural enemy of the book, as the whore is of the decent woman.

—Edmond and Jules de Goncourt, 1858

History does not merely touch on language, but takes place in it.

—Theodor Adorno, c. 1946

When action grows unprofitable, gather information; when information grows unprofitable, sleep.

—Ursula K. Le Guin, 1969

Man 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. 217