quotations about words
When you write you lay out a line of words. The line of words is a miner's pick, a woodcarver's gouge, a surgeon's probe. You wield it and it digs a path you follow.
ANNIE DILLARD
The Writing Life
In all major socializing forces you will find an underlying movement to gain and maintain power through the use of words. From witch doctor to priest to bureaucrat it is all the same. A governed populace must be conditioned to accept power-words as actual things, to confuse the symbolized system with the tangible universe. In the maintenance of such a power structure, certain symbols are kept out of reach of common understanding--symbols such as those dealing with economic manipulation or those which define the local interpretation of sanity. Symbol-secrecy of this form leads to the development of fragmented sub-languages, each being a signal that its users are accumulating some form of power.
FRANK HERBERT
Children of Dune
A word is nothing unless it has values and an atmosphere, unless you grasp its historical significance.
STEFAN ZWEIG
Confusion of Feelings or Confusion
The clear and simple words of common usage are always better than those of erudition. The jargon of the philosophers not seldom conceals an absence of thought.
ANDRÉ MAUROIS
The Art of Writing
Our words are always formative ... what we think and constantly affirm becomes our reality.
BARBARA WALSH
"Choosing our words wisely for encouragement", Deming Headlight, January 28, 2016
Words are very unnecessary
They can only do harm
DEPECHE MODE
"Enjoy the Silence"
Such simple words! But words are mighty things;
They cast us down, or lift us up to rest;
They charm and strengthen, till our angel sings
The last of all the life-songs, and the best.
SARAH DOUDNEY
Some Words
Language is an impure medium. Speech is public property and words are the soiled products, not of nature, but of society, which circulates and uses them for a thousand different ends.
EDWARD HIRSCH
How to Read a Poem
Throughout the years my writing has taken on many styles. Whether it was to discover myself, de-clutter my mind, get over heartache or decipher the lessons I was supposed to learn. Good or bad, words have always been there for me.
HEIDI ALLEN
"Words Are Powerful -- My Journey With Words", Huffington Post, March 14, 2017
The word is too weak. There is no word in the language strong enough to describe my feelings.
JACK LONDON
The Star Rover
Words have a magical power. They can bring either the greatest happiness or deepest despair; they can transfer knowledge from teacher to student; words enable the orator to sway his audience and dictate its decisions. Words are capable of arousing the strongest emotions and prompting all men's actions.
SIGMUND FREUD
attributed, The Educator's Book of Quotes
Our words are such powerful tools, tools that shape divine ideas into reality.
BARBARA WALSH
"Choosing our words wisely for encouragement", Deming Headlight, January 28, 2016
All words are pegs to hang ideas on.
HENRY WARD BEECHER
Proverbs from Plymouth Pulpit
Abuse of words has been the great instrument of sophistry and chicanery, of party, faction, and division of society.
JOHN ADAMS
letter to J. H. Tiffany, March 31, 1819
A new word is like a fresh seed sown on the ground of the discussion.
LUDWIG WITTGENSTEIN
Culture and Value
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.
MARK TWAIN
"Essay on William Dean Howells"
The sharpest sword is a word spoken in wrath.
GAUTAMA BUDDHA
The Gospel of Buddha
Words are naught but wind, and the fairest promises like dreams that take flight with the morning.
ÉDOUARD RENÉ DE LABOULAYE
Abdallah
Written words differ from spoken words in being material structures. A spoken word is a process in the physical world, having an essential time-order; a written word is a series of pieces of matter, having an essential space-order.
BERTRAND RUSSELL
Philosophy
You wait for nothing
if not for the word
that will burst from the deep
like a fruit among branches.
CESARE PAVESE
"Earth and Death"