John Marshall Quotes

I don't think you need to dumb down to a child, you merely have to be clear, you know?

Always try to use the language so as to make quite clear what you mean and make sure your sentence couldn't mean anything else.

Me is a common sense man. That mean when me explain things, me explain it in a very simple way; that mean if I explain it to a baby, the baby will understand too, you know.

I analyse in my own way, in very simple, no-jargon language. If somebody is talking in very complicated way, I never like that.

The more clearly you write, the more easily and surely you will be understood.

Everything that can be thought at all can be thought clearly. Everything that can be said can be said clearly. Ludwig Wittgenstein

Just when I thought there wasn't room enough for another thought in my head, I had this great idea—

I write with two things in mind. I want to be right with my fellow economists. After all, I've made my life as a professional economist, so I'm careful that my economics is as it should be. But I have long felt that there's no economic proposition that can't be stated in clear, accessible language. So I try to be right with my fellow economists, but I try to have an audience of any interested, intelligent person.

No blur of inexactness, no cloud of vagueness, is allowable in good writing; from the first seeing to the last putting down, there must be steady lucidity and uncompromise of purpose.

I notice that you use plain, simple language, short words and brief sentences. That is the way to write English - it is the modern way and the best way. Stick to it; don't let fluff and flowers and verbosity creep in.

Short, sweet, and to the point. Clear writing, and therefore clear commands, comes from clear thinking. Think simple.

If the reader doesn't understand what you're saying, you're talking to yourself.

The most original of authors are not so because they advance what is new, but more because they know how to say something, as if it had never been said before.

Now in creative thought common sense is a bad master. Its sole criterion for judgement is that the new ideas shall look like the old ones. In other words it can only work by suppressing originality.

If you ever have a new idea, and it's really new, you have to expect that it won't be widely accepted immediately. It's a long hard process.

The main thing I try to do is write as clearly as I can. Because I have the greatest respect for the reader, and if he's going to the trouble of reading what I've written -- I'm a slow reader myself and I guess most people are -- why, the least I can do is make it as easy as possible for him to find out what I'm trying to say, trying to get at. I rewrite a good deal to make it clear.

What isn’t clear, isn’t French.

I think that as you learn more about writing you learn to be direct.

Giving me a a new idea is like handing a cretin a gun, but I do thank you anyhow, bang bang.

The understanding between a non-technical writer and his reader is that he shall talk more or less like a human being and not like an Act of Parliament. I take it that the aim of such books must be to convey exact thought in inexact language... he can never succeed without the co-operation of the reader.

When you venture at life with curiosity, you can learn from anything. You learn from things that you could never maybe thought you could learn from. And when you actually step into the room with a lot of people who have an education in a classroom, that is very similar to other people's educations, you'll actually come with a unique perspective that could be a valuable perspective that creates an innovation that could change the world.

It is important that you say what you mean to say. Time is too short. You must speak the words that matter.

Copying isn’t particularly creative work. Being inspired by someone else’s idea to produce something new and different IS creative work.

The worth of a new idea is invariably determined, not by the degree of its intuitiveness-which incidentally, is to a major extent a matter of experience and habit-but by the scope and accuracy of the individual laws to the discovery of which it eventually leads.