“No man means all he says, and yet very few say all they mean, for words are slippery and thought is viscous.”
“He who seldom speaks, and with one calm well-timed word can strike dumb the loquacious, is a genius or a hero.”
“If the word has the potency to revive and make us free, it has also the power to blind, imprison, and destroy.”
“We are getting into semantics again. If we use words, there is a very grave danger they will be misinterpreted.”
“Nothing can throw thee into the infernal abyss so much as this detested word -- heed well! -- this mine and thine.”
“Abuse of words has been the great instrument of sophistry and chicanery, of party, faction, and division of society.”
“The difference between the right word and the almost right word is the difference between lightning and the lightning bug.”
“Gentle words, quiet words, are after all the most powerful words. They are more convincing, more compelling, more prevailing.”
“Truthful words are not beautiful; beautiful words are not truthful. Good words are not persuasive; persuasive words are not good.”
“When I use a word,'' Humpty Dumpty said in rather a scornful tone,'' it means just what I choose it to mean -- neither more nor less.”
“I find it difficult to believe that words have no meaning in themselves, hard as I try. Habits of a lifetime are not lightly thrown aside.”
“But words are things, and a small drop of ink, falling like dew, upon a thought, produces that which makes thousands, perhaps millions, think.”
“In fact, words are well adapted for description and the arousing of emotion, but for many kinds of precise thought other symbols are much better.”
“There are words which sever hearts more than sharp swords; there are words the point of which sting the heart through the course of a whole life.”
“Words today are like the shells and rope of seaweed which a child brings home glistening from the beach and which in an hour have lost their luster.”
“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.”
“Our great men have written words of wisdom to be used when hardship must be faced. Life obliges us with hardship so the words of wisdom shouldn't go to waste.”
“Without words to objectify and categorize our sensations and place them in relation to one another, we cannot evolve a tradition of what is real in the world.”
“Words are not as satisfactory as we should like them to be, but, like our neighbors, we have got to live with them and must make the best and not the worst of them.”
“Words are made for a certain exactness of thought, as tears are for a certain degree of pain. What is least distinct cannot be named; what is clearest is unutterable.”
“The basic tool for the manipulation of reality is the manipulation of words. If you can control the meaning of words, you can control the people who must use the words.”
“Words are always getting conventionalized to some secondary meaning. It is one of the works of poetry to take the truants in custody and bring them back to their right senses.”
“Each group of words is processed by the brain as a single thought. And because the words are viewed in context, you retain them more accurately than if you processed the words individually.”
“A word is not a crystal, transparent and unchanged, it is the skin of a living thought and may vary greatly in color and content according to the circumstances and the time in which it is used.”
“A powerful agent is the right word. Whenever we come upon one of those intensely right words in a book or a newspaper the resulting effect is physical as well as spiritual, and electrically prompt.”
“Tsze-Kung asked, saying, is there one word which may serve as a rule of practice for all one's life?'' The Master said, ''Is not Reciprocity such a word? What you do not want done to yourself, do not do to others.”
“Poor Faulkner. Does he really think big emotions come from big words? He thinks I don't know the ten-dollar words. I know them all right. But there are older and simpler and better words, and those are the ones I use.”
“Words can have no single fixed meaning. Like wayward electrons, they can spin away from their initial orbit and enter a wider magnetic field. No one owns them or has a proprietary right to dictate how they will be used.”
“Bu'' is a word that cools many a warm impulse, stifles many a kindly thought, puts a dead stop to many a brotherly deed. No one would ever love his neighbor as himself if he listened to all the ''Buts'' that could be said.”
“One of our defects as a nation is a tendency to use what have been called ''weasel words.'' When a weasel sucks eggs the meat is sucked out of the egg. If you use a ''weasel word'' after another there is nothing left of the other.”