Maury Maverick Quotes

The government uses words that make almost no sense to those of us in ordinary life.

Jargon: any technical language we do not understand.

The deliberate introduction of distortion and fuzziness to improve the competitive position of one's own agency or division is an unavoidable and dominant feature of the bureaucratic landscape

I'm really fascinated by lingos and colloquialisms that are outmoded and have gone by the wayside. I love the way people spoke in the '30s, and the amazing slang of the mid-'60s and '70s.

Slang is a language that rolls up its sleeves, spits on its hands and goes to work.

Incomprehensible jargon is the hallmark of a profession.

I think we invent jargon because it saves times talking to one-another.

Buzzwords and cliches - those are stock in trade. There's nothing wrong with them.

People say jargon is a bad thing, but it's really a shortcut vocabulary professionals use to understand one another.

What language are you talking in now? It appears to be bollocks.

[Describing himself:] ... a redtape Talking-machine, and unhappy Bag of Parliamentary Eloquence.

Whatever was required to be done, the Circumlocution Office was beforehand with all the public departments in the art of perceiving—how not to do it. No public business of any kind could possibly be done at any time without the acquiescence of the Circumlocution Office. Its finger was in the largest public pie, and in the smallest public tart.

I can't speak for the OPC. I'm all balled up on all these initials.

Catchphrases flourish in contemporary American English.

Try not to be either intimidated by or a captive of jargon. Even though it's language, and language is about communication, it often exists actually to obfuscate and to control power and not to communicate.

Slang is really coded talk. I can say a few things, in front of somebody, that only people who know what I'm saying are going to pick up on.

Slang moves on so fast that most new words disappear soon after they are coined. But there is always something that sticks behind.

We are surrounded by hundreds of 'tribes,' each speaking their own distinct slanguage of colourful words, jokes and phrases that together form an idiosyncratic phrasebook, years in the making.

Bureaucrats are the only people in the world who can say absolutely nothing and mean it.

I overuse words. My kids catch me saying stuff. They're like, 'Hey, you say that all the time.' 'Boom' is one of those things.

Whenever a poet or preacher, chief or wizard spouts gibberish, the human race spends centuries deciphering the message.

I have this little thing that people call Keegan-ese, where I don't speak English words at all. I just say stuff like, "You gotta toish the doish and you gotta maloish the hoish."

Jargon is part ceremonial robe, part false beard.

Being obscure in acronyms is great. I think I'll start making up my own... INYM - I'm Not Your Momma.

George Orwell once blamed the demise of the English language on politics. It's quite possible he never read a prospectus.