Language is like soil. However rich, it is subject to erosion, and its fertility is constantly threatened by uses that exhaust its vitality. It needs constant re-invigoration if it is not to become arid and sterile.
– Elizabeth Drew, author, critic (1887-1965)
The great enemy of clear language is insincerity. Political language…is designed to make lies sound truthful and murder respectable, and to give an appearance of solidity to pure wind.
– George Orwell, writer (1903-1950)
- Political Language
- Daily Media Quotation – a daily selection of political comment from the Australian press
- Yes, Virginia, There Is A Santa Claus
- Eulogy of the Dog – The courtroom address of George Vest (1870)
Political Quotations
An eclectic collection of choice (and not necessarily political) quotes
Sets of 20: 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12, 13, 14, 15, 16, 17, 18, 19, 20, 21, 22, 23, 24, 25, 26, 27, 28, 29, 30, 31, 32, 33, 34, 35, 36, 37, 38
Language is as real, as tangible, in our lives as streets, pipelines, telephone switchboards, microwaves, radioactivity, cloning laboratories, nuclear power stations.
– Adrienne Rich, writer (1929-2012)
Words – so innocent and powerless as they are, as standing in a dictionary, how potent for good and evil they become in the hands of one who knows how to combine them.
– Nathaniel Hawthorne, writer (1804-1864)
Readers may be divided into four classes: 1. Sponges, who absorb all that they read and return it in nearly the same state, only a little dirtied. 2. Sand-glasses, who retain nothing and are content to get through a book for the sake of getting through the time. 3. Strain-bags, who retain merely the dregs of what they read. 4. Mogul diamonds, equally rare and valuable, who profit by what they read, and enable others to profit by it also.
– Samuel Taylor Coleridge, poet, critic (1772-1834)
