All euphemisms are dishonest, but many are designed to make life easier — Kate Burridge
Euphemisms are unpleasant truths wearing diplomatic cologne. — Quentin Crisp
Vagueness is at times an indication of nearness to a perfect truth. — Charles Ives
Never tell a lie when you can bullshit your way through it — Eric Ambler
If you can't dazzle them with brilliance, baffle them with bull. — W. C. Fields
By using stale metaphors, similes and idioms, you save much mental effort, at the cost of leaving your meaning vague, not only for your reader but for yourself. — George Orwell
Our disputants put me in mind of the cuttlefish that, when he is unable to extricate himself, blackens the water about him till he becomes invisible. — Joseph Addison
I would like to provoke ambiguous responses in my readers. — James Ellroy
I look for ambiguity when I'm writing because life is ambiguous. — Keith Richards
A typical vice of American politics is the avoidance of saying anything real on real issues. — Theodore Roosevelt
The human language, as precise as it is with its thousands of words, can still be so wonderfully vague. — Garth Stein
Equivocal Quotes
I will be as harsh as truth, and uncompromising as justice... I am in earnest, I will not equivocate, I will not excuse, I will not retreat a single inch, and I will be heard. — William Lloyd Garrison
It provokes the desire but it takes away the performance. Therefore much drink may be said to be an equivocator with lechery: it makes him and it mars him; it sets him on and it takes him off. — William Shakespeare
A proud and healthy society does not equivocate when it comes to stating clearly and unequivocally what it expects of its prospective immigrants. It is for immigrants to adapt to the host nation's values and never the other way around. — Gad Saad
Religion is dogmatic. Politic is ideological. Reason must be logical, but literature has a privilege of being equivocal. — Carlos Fuentes
First it must be known that only a spoken word or a conventional sign is an equivocal or univocal term; therefore a mental contentor concept is, strictly speaking, neither equivocal nor univocal. — William of Ockham
From the alienated starting point of our pseudo-sanity, everything is equivocal. Our sanity is not "true" sanity. Their madness is not "true" madness. The madness of our patients is an artifact of the destruction wreaked on them by us, and by them on themselves. — R. D. Laing
So here we have it. The equivocating distinction between civilisation and savagery, between the "massacre of innocent people" or, if you like, "a clash of civilisations" and "collateral damage". The sophistry and fastidious algebra of infinite justice. — Arundhati Roy
The tone of good conversation is brilliant and natural; it is neither tedious nor frivolous; it is instructive without pedantry, gay without tumultuousness, polished without affectation, gallant without insipidity, waggish without equivocation. — Jean-Jacques Rousseau
In the context of our present pervasive madness that we call normality, sanity, freedom, all our frames of reference are ambiguous and equivocal. — R. D. Laing
It has been my fate in a long life of production to be credited chiefly with the equivocal virtue of industry, a quality so excellent in morals, so little satisfactory in art. — Margaret Oliphant
Unequivocal Quotes
If an 'animal abuser' were killed in a research lab firebombing, I would unequivocally support that, too. — Gary Yourofsky
I can say unequivocally that the boycott does not work. It's never complete enough to have impact unless it's backed by force, and I don't think anybody in America seriously proposes that. — Helen Suzman
The struggle against war and its social source, capitalism, presupposes direct, active, unequivocal support to the oppressed colonial peoples in their struggles and wars against imperialism. A 'neutral' position is tantamount to support of imperialism. — Leon Trotsky
Once you make the unequivocal internal commitment to do something - when you absolutely know this is the time and the place to act - the world around you will shift in all sorts of apparently miraculous ways to make it happen. — Sarah Susanka
All of the great leaders have had one characteristic in common: it was the willingness to confront unequivocally the major anxiety of their people in their time. This, and not much else, is the essence of leadership. — John Kenneth Galbraith
If condoms and potentially microbicides can prevent millions of deaths [from AIDS], they should be made more widely available. I know that there are those who, out of sincere religious conviction, oppose such measures. And with these folks, I must respectfully but unequivocally disagree. — Barack Obama
Experience is the oracle of truth; and where its responses are unequivocal, they ought to be conclusive and sacred. — Alexander Hamilton
A good physiological experiment like a good physical one requires that it should present anywhere, at any time, under identical conditions, the same certain and unequivocal phenomena that can always be confirmed. — Johannes Peter Muller
I want to state upfront, unequivocally and without doubt: I do not believe that any racial, ethnic or gender group has an advantage in sound judging. I do believe that every person has an equal opportunity to be a good and wise judge, regardless of their background or life experiences. — Sonia Sotomayor
We favor the simple expression of the complex thought. We are for the large shape because it has the impact of the unequivocal. We wish to reassert the picture plane. We are for flat forms because they destroy illusion and reveal truth. — Mark Rothko
I was making my work as transparent as possible, without equivocations, without calling attention to itself, without apology. There's a lot of conventions in the art world that are not to be transgressed, but my economy of means doesn't abide by those strictures. There's no reason to abide by them. I don't have any vested interest in it. — Raymond Pettibon
The severe schools shall never laugh me out of the philosophy of Hermes, that this visible world is but a picture of the invisible, wherein as in a portrait, things are not truly, but in equivocal shapes, and as they counterfeit some real substance in that invisible fabric. — Thomas Browne
...Jews must learn to say without excuse, without equivocation: despite our history and our powerlessness in the past, despite allthe injustices that we have endured--today, now, the Palestinians are the victims of oppression, and their oppressors are the Israelis. — Irena Klepfisz
The contradictions in Renan , his feminine sensibility, coquetry, unavowed egotism, and sudden emotional outbursts, all indicate a soul deliberately using distraction as a means of evasion. The perpetual equivocation bears witness to God in the same way as the twisting and turning of a hunted animal indicates the presence of an unseen hunter. — Georges Bernanos
Nothing seems more like a whorehouse to me than a museum. In it you find the same equivocal aspect, the same frozen quality. — Michel Leiris
Whenever a liberal begins a peevish complaint with a throat-clearing equivocation like, "Of course, we all agree," your antennae should go up. This is how liberals couch statements they assume all Americans would demand they make, but which they secretly chafe at. — Ann Coulter
And just think, fellow Southrons, what kind of a Confederate nation we could have, if after independence, politicians abandoned equivocation and spoke honestly and firmly on all issues? If they were to do their duty to God, nation, and people, there would be virtually no need for any form of federal litigation. — Charley Reese
For a second, two seconds, they had exchanged an equivocal glance, and that was the end of the story. But even that was a memorable event, in the locked loneliness in which one had to live. — George Orwell
There is something suspicious about music, gentlemen. I insist that she is, by her nature, equivocal. I shall not be going too far in saying at once that she is politically suspect. — Thomas Mann
I am in earnest -- I will not equivocate -- I will not excuse --I will not retreat a single inch --and I will be heard! — William Lloyd Garrison
I am in earnest - I will not equivocate - I will not excuse - I will not retreat a single inch - and I will be heard! — William Lloyd Garrison
You can't always see both sides of the story. Eventually, you have to pick a side and stick with it. No more equivocating. You have to commit. — John Mulaney
I am so pleased with my golf course. I am to say that it's the best I've ever seen it - without equivocation. — Arnold Palmer
The greater the stupidity, the greater the clarity. Stupidity is brief and guileless, while wit equivocates and hides. Wit is a scoundrel, while stupidity is honest and sincere. — Fyodor Dostoevsky
In all disputes, a point is arrived at where no party, no matter how right or wrong it might have been at the start of that dispute, will any longer be totally in the right or totally in the wrong. Such a point I believe, has been reached in this debate... Let us not equivocate. A tragedy of unprecedented proportions is unfolding in Africa. — Nelson Mandela
The equivocations, the confusions, the contradictions. There's no way we can live through or comprehend something so big that happened so long ago. We've lost true history. But if we are willing to tolerate the contradictions, and if we suffer through events rather than ticking them off, we may at least get closer to understanding what happened than if we grip the handrail of a carefully polished and reassuringly heroic narrative. — Nicholson Baker
There are folks who will equivocate. They'll say, 'You know, I'm not a scientist.' Well, I'm not either. But the best scientists in the world know that climate change is happening. — Barack Obama
Aphorisms may equivocate, but they must not wobble. — Mason Cooley
Without being bound to the fulfillment of promises, we would never be able to keep our identities; we would be condemned to wanderhelplessly and without direction in the darkness of each man's lonely heart, caught in its contradictions and equivocalities--a darkness which only the light shed over the public realm through the presence of others, who confirm the identity between the one who promises and the one who fulfills, can dispel. — Hannah Arendt
Often poetry, especially the sort of poetry I write, is concerned with looking at the borders between the sensual and the spiritual and seeing them as divided, equivocal, that mystery somehow can break in to the ordinary. And we read poetry I think in part, to gain a sense of that intimacy with things that we can't understand that are unable to be understood but that buoy up our lives. — Kevin Hart
Ann and I will carry out this equivocal message to the world: Markets must be open. — George W. Bush
Thus grows up fashion, an equivocal semblance, the most puissant, the most fantastic and frivolous, the most feared and followed, and which morals and violence assault in vain. — Ralph Waldo Emerson
People may find it more comfortable to listen to us if we equivocate, but in the long run only words that discomfort them are going to change our situation. — Barbara Deming
... he that will live in this World, must be endu'd with the three rare Qualities of Dissimulation, Equivocation, and mental Reservation. — Aphra Behn
There is no possible excuse for a guarded lie. Enthusiastic and impulsive people will sometimes falsify thoughtlessly, but equivocation is malice prepense. — Hosea Ballou
Evasion is unworthy of us, and is always the intimate of equivocation. — Honore de Balzac
The end of man (as a factual anthropological limit) is announced to thought from the vantage of the end of man (as a determined opening or the infinity of a telos ). Man is that which is in relation to his end, in the fundamentally equivocal sense of the word. Since always. — Jacques Derrida
Whereas, according to the declaration of that true man of the world Talleyrand, the use of language is to conceal the thoughts; this is to declare in the present instance, when I say I am not able to bear much talking, it means really, and without any mistake, or equivocation, or oblique meaning, or implication, or subterfuge, or omission, that I am not able; being at present rather weak in the head, and able to work no more. — Michael Faraday
Poetry is simply literature reduced to the essence of its active principle. It is purged of idols of every kind, of realistic illusions, of any conceivable equivocation between the language of "truth" and the language of "creation." — Paul Valery
It is a dangerous assumption to say that people who drain energy "don't know what they are doing." People are sophisticated aware beings. Don't sit around and equivocate; they'll drain you more. — Frederick Lenz
I am aware that many object to the severity of my language; but is there not cause for severity? I will be as harsh as truth, and as uncompromising as justice. On this subject, I do not wish to think, or to speak, or write, with moderation. ... I am in earnest - I will not equivocate - I will not excuse - I will not retreat a single inch - AND I WILL BE HEARD. — John Paul Stevens
Say what you mean to do...and take it for granted you mean to do right. Never do a wrong thing to make a friend or keep one...you will wrong him and wrong yourself by equivocation of any kind. — Robert E. Lee
The wheel of progress revolves relentlessly and all the nations of the world take their turn at the field-glass of human destiny. Africa will not retreat! Africa will not compromise! Africa will not relent! Africa will not equivocate! And she will be heard! Remember Africa! — Robert Sobukwe
Washington has a mysterious power to turn perfectly reasonable, wholesome, well-meaning human beings into equivocating crooked gasbags. — David Harsanyi
A woman with a mother heart has a testimony of the restored gospel, and she teaches the principles of the gospel without equivocation. She is keeping sacred covenants made in holy temples. Her talents and skills are shared unselfishly. She gains as much education as her circumstances will allow, improving her mind and spirit with the desire to teach what she learns to the generations who follow her. — Julie B. Beck
In Conclusion
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