Language is power... Language can be used as a means of changing reality. — Adrienne Rich
Language is legislation, speech is its code. We do not see the power which is in speech because we forget that all speech is a classification, and that all classifications are oppressive. — Roland Barthes
By and large, language is a tool for concealing the truth. — George Carlin
Wherever the relevance of speech is at stake, matters become political by definition, for speech is what makes man a political being. — Hannah Arendt
Language is the apparel in which your thoughts parade before the public. — George W. Crane
Politics means striving to share power or striving to influence the distribution of power, either among states or among groups within a state. — Max Weber
Language is courage: the ability to conceive a thought, to speak it, and by doing so to make it true. — Salman Rushdie
Clarity of language is the first casualty of authoritarianism. — Robin Morgan
Politics is when you say you are going to do one thing while intending to do another. Then you do neither what you said nor what you intended. — Saddam Hussein
Language commonly stresses only one side of any interaction. — Gregory Bateson
As societies grow decadent, the language grows decadent, too. Words are used to disguise, not to illuminate, action. — Gore Vidal
Politics are usually the executive expression of human immaturity. — Vera Brittain
I seek a form of language which will express my ideas for our time. — Arshile Gorky
Short Political Language Quotes
Politics is the art of making your selfish desires seem like the national interest. — Thomas Sowell
Kindness is the language which the deaf can hear and the blind can see.
Political Discourse Quotes
The debates are part of the unconscionable fraud that our political campaigns have become a format that defies meaningful discourse. They should be charged with sabotaging the electoral process. — Walter Cronkite
One-dimensional thought is systematically promoted by the makers of politics and their purveyors of mass information. Their universe of discourse is populated by self-validating hypotheses which, incessantly and monopolistically repeated, become hyponotic definitions of dictations. — Herbert Marcuse
In our national discourse and in pursuing our national agenda, we must never leave anyone behind. We must reach out to the many who may have been disaffected and left confused by political games, deceit and showmanship. The people first must transcend every level of society. — Najib Razak
A warm smile is the universal language of kindness.
Kindly politeness is the slow fruit of advanced reflection; it is a sort of humanity and kindliness applied to small acts and every day discourse: it bids man soften towards others, and forget himself for the sake of others: it constrains genuine nature, which is selfish and gross. — Hippolyte Taine
Two truths are all too often overshadowed in today's political discourse: Public service is a most honorable pursuit, and so is bipartisanship. — Olympia Snowe
Reason is a faculty far larger than mere objective force. When either the political or the scientific discourse announces itself as the voice of reason, it is playing God, and should be spanked and stood in the corner. — Ursula K. Le Guin
When words are both true and kind they can change the world.
This was a good example of the fascist policing of public discourse in this country by nominal liberals who have become as unthinkingly wedded to dogma as any junior member of the Spanish Inquisition. — Camille Paglia
If you listen to the political discourse in America today, you would think that all our problems have been caused by the Mexicans of the Chinese or the Muslims. The reality is that we have caused our own problems. Whatever has happened has been caused by isolating ourselves or blaming others. — Fareed Zakaria
TV serves us most usefully when presenting junk-entertainment; it serves us most ill when it co-opts serious modes of discourse - news, politics, science, education, commerce, religion. — Neil Postman
The world of public discourse - political, social, diplomatic, commercial - has so corrupted language that we are rightly more suspicious of the meaning of words than we are convinced of their veracity. Language has been turned on its head. — Deena Metzger
Political Rhetoric Quotes
If you get beyond the political rhetoric [and assembled a group to solve Social Security] it would take them 15 minutes. It would take them 15 minutes only because 10 minutes was used for pleasantries. — Alan Greenspan
Like so many before him who have ruined countries around the world, Obama has a greatly inflated idea of his own capabilities and the capabilities off what can be accomplished by rhetoric or even by political power. — Thomas Sowell
Politics is still crucially important. Our choices are vital, and we've got to make them and not just say, 'Oh they're all the same.' They are all the same in certain ways, alas - a political animal is such an animal. — Dennis Potter
Be gentle with yourself, you're doing the best you can.
It is truly a triumph of rhetoric over reality when people can believe that going into politics is 'public service,' but that producing food, shelter, transportation, or medical care is not. — Thomas Sowell
A commonplace of political rhetoric has it that the quality of a civilization may be measured by how it cares for its elderly. Just as surely, the future of a society may be forecast by how it cares for its young. — Daniel Patrick Moynihan
Do the rhetorical quarrels of bourgeois political parties have anything to do with the interests of the humble and downtrodden? — Mario Vargas Llosa
Never make fun of someone who speaks broken English. It means they know another language.
So I think it's important to communicate with the people in terms of what the real facts are on these proposals and try to have a discussion and a dialogue that gives people information. I think they're hungry for that rather than just political rhetoric. — John Podesta
One sees a trend in our political and legal cultures toward treating religious beliefs as arbitrary and unimportant, a trend supported by a rhetoric that implies that there is something wrong with religious devotion. — Stephen L. Carter
Democrats were simply hoping to win some political points by getting their outlandish rhetoric published in the newspapers and heard on the talk shows. — John Doolittle
Political Writing Quotes
The jaws of power are always open to devour, and her arm is always stretched out, if possible, to destroy the freedom of thinking, speaking, and writing. — John Adams
Let me issue and control a nation's money and I care not who writes the laws. — Mayer Amschel Rothschild
In our time, political speech and writing are largely the defense of the indefensible... Thus, political language has to consist largely of euphemism, question-begging, and sheer cloudy vagueness... Political language [is] designed to make lies sound truthful and murder respectable. — George Orwell
The language of friendship is not words, but meanings.
Nobel Prize winner in Economics Vernon Smith writes: Water has become a commodity whose quantity and quality is too important to be left in the hands of political authorities. — Javier Milei
Writing was a political act and poetry was a cultural weapon. — Linton Kwesi Johnson
There is no such thing as public opinion. There is only published opinion.
Be polite; write diplomatically; even in a declaration of war one observes the rules of politeness. — Otto von Bismarck
As long as I don't write about the government, religion, politics, and other institutions, I am free to print anything. — Pierre Beaumarchais
My first real writing job was at 'Rolling Stone,' so I wrote about rock-and-roll and politics and the like. At the time, I really didn't know what I wanted to write, and I did a bunch of investigative journalism. — Tim Cahill
I don't like political poetry, and I don't write it. If this question was pointing towards that, I think it is missing the point of the American tradition, which is always apolitical, even when the poetry comes out of politically active writers. — Diane Wakoski
Music does bring people together. It allows us to experience the same emotions. People everywhere are the same in heart and spirit. No matter what language we speak, what color we are, the form of our politics or the expression of our love and our faith, music proves: We are the same. — John Denver
Treat everyone with politeness and kindness, not because they are nice, but because you are.
We live in a world where our social system is old, our language is old, the way we acquire goods and services is outdated, our cities are detrimental to our health, chaotic and a tremendous waste of resource, and most of all our politics and values no longer serve us. — Jacque Fresco
In these days of political, personal and economic disintegration, music is not a luxury, it's a necessity; not simply because it is therapeutic, nor because it is the universal language, but because it is the persistent focus of our intelligence, aspiration and goodwill. — Robert Lawson Shaw
Be the person your dog thinks you are.
You can never understand one language until you understand at least two. — Geoffrey Willans
Photography is a universal language, transcending the boundaries of race, politics, and nationality. — Arthur Rothstein
Like music and art, love of nature is a common language that can transcend political or social boundaries. — Jimmy Carter
I am a very simple man. I am a man first, an artist second. My first obligation is to the welfare of my fellow man. I will endeavour to meet this obligation through music, since it transcends language, politics and national boundaries. — Pablo Casals
The language of the law must not be foreign to the ears of those who are to obey it. — Learned Hand
Don’t you see that the whole aim of Newspeak is to narrow the range of thought? In the end we shall make thoughtcrime literally impossible, because there will be no words in which to express it. — George Orwell
He who controls the past controls the future. — Lao Tzu
...These politically correct language initiatives are misguided and harmful. They create highly entitled professional "victims" who expect to be free from any offense, and they engender a stifling atmosphere where all individuals walk on eggshells lest they might commit a linguistic capital crime. — Gad Saad
If you are to reach masses of people in this world, you must do it by a sign language. Whether your vehicle be commerce, literature, or politics, you can do nothing but raise signals, and make motions to the people. — John Jay Chapman
Political writing in our time consists almost entirely of prefabricated phrases bolted together like the pieces of a child's Meccano set. It is the unavoidable result of self-censorship. To write in plain, vigorous language one has to think fearlessly, and if one thinks fearlessly one cannot be politically orthodox. — George Orwell
All official institutions of language are repeating machines: school, sports, advertising, popular songs, news, all continually repeat the same structure, the same meaning, often the same words: the stereotype is a political fact, the major figure of ideology. — Roland Barthes
Disappointment over nationalistic authoritarian regimes may have contributed to the fact that today religion offers a new and subjectively more convincing language for old political orientations. — Jurgen Habermas
The inflated style is itself a kind of euphemism. A mass of Latin words falls upon the facts like soft snow, blurring the outlines and covering up all the details. The great enemy of clear language is insincerity. — George Orwell
There's something retro about your persona. It's like the pre-World War II generation of reporters - those unpretentious, working-class guys who hung around saloons and used rough language. Now they've all been replaced with these effete Ivy League elitists who swarm over the current media. Nerds - utterly dull and insipid. — Camille Paglia
Because powerful images are fixed in the mind more readily than words, the photographer needs no interpreter. A photograph means the same thing all over the world and no translator is required. Photography is truly a universal language, transcending all boundaries of race, politics and nationality. — Arthur Rothstein
America is destined to be peopled by one nation, speaking one language, professing one general system of religious and political principles, and accustomed to one general tenor of social usages and customs. — John Adams
In such a society as ours the only possible chance for change, for mobility, for political, economic, and moral flow lies in the tactics of guerrilla warfare, in the use of fictions, of language. — Kathy Acker
Political language is designed to make lies sound truthful and murder respectable and to give an appearance of solidarity to pure wind. — George Orwell
If political correctness has achieved one thing, it’s that it has made the Conservative party cloak their inherent racism behind more creative language — Stewart Lee
Political chaos is connected with the decay of language... one can probably bring about some improvement by starting at the verbal end. — George Orwell
Our common language is English. And our common task is to ensure that our non-English-speaking children learn this common language. — William Bennett
The whole compass of the language is tried to find sinonimies [synonyms] and circumlocutions for massacres and murder. Things never called by their common names. Massacre is sometimes called agitation, sometimes effervescence, sometimes excess sometimes too continued an exercise of revolutionary power. — Sayings
No language is rude that can boast polite writers. — Aubrey Beardsley
In scientific matters there was a common language and one standard of values; in moral and political problems there were many. … Furthermore, in science there is a court of last resort, experiment, which is unavailable in human affairs. — Emilio G. Segre
In the era of imperialism, businessmen became politicians and were acclaimed as statesmen, while statesmen were taken seriously only if they talked the language of succcessful businessmen. — Hannah Arendt
When the American people look at the political process play out, they hear all the spinning and all the doctrinaire language, and they still walk away with the belief that they're not being represented in Congress, that there's no trust in the executive branch. — David Gregory
The sea speaks a language polite people never repeat. It is a colossal scavenger slang and has no respect. — Carl Sandburg
The first problem of the media is posed by what does not get translated, or even published in the dominant political languages. — Jacques Derrida
My political curiosity, exclusive of my anxious solicitude for the public welfare, leads me to ask who authorized them (the framers of the Constitution) to speak the language of 'We, the People,' instead of 'We, the States'? — Patrick Henry
In the broadest sense, evolution is merely change, and so is all-pervasive; galaxies, languages, and political systems all evolve. Biological evolution ... is change in the properties of populations of organisms that transcend the lifetime of a single individual. — Douglas J. Futuyma
The great enemy of clear language is insincerity. — George Orwell
What we need are poems that interrogate the world of pronouns, open up possibilities of language and life; forms of politics that support and encourage self-affirmation. — Judith Butler
Language, journalism, food, sex. All is politics. Even innocent love stories are politics. ... There is no such thing as neutrality. — Nawal El Saadawi
Make no mistake about it: the labeling of someone's language as 'sexist' involves a political judgment and implies the desirability of a particular sociological doctrine. One may be in favor of that doctrine (as I believe I am) but it is quite another matter to force writers by edicts and censorship into accepting it. — Neil Postman
We cannot be divided either by the languages we speak, by the faiths we profess or by the political views we choose. — Viktor Yushchenko
Language is political. That's why you and me, my Brother and Sister, that's why we supposed to choke our natural self into the weird, lying, barbarous, unreal, white speech and writing habits that the schools lay down like holy law. — June Jordan
While the business of education in Europe consists in lectures upon the ruins of Palmyra and the antiquities of Herculaneum , or in disputes about Hebrew points, Greek particles, or the accent and quantity of the Roman language, the youth of America will be employed in acquiring those branches of knowledge which increase the conveniences of life. — Benjamin Rush
I think maybe since there isn't a great deal of access to the mainstream media and people don't understand the language of mainstream media, if you put music out there with lyrics that are loosely political, people absorb some of it and spit it back out. — Thom Yorke
In Conclusion
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