Adam Smith Quotes

Aiming at brevity, I become obscure.

Words are how people think. When you misuse words, you diminish your ability to think clearly and truthfully.

If we do away with semi-colons, parentheses and much else, we will lose all music, nuance and subtlety in communication - and end up shouting at one another in block capitals.

Put it before them briefly so they will read it, clearly so they will appreciate it, picturesquely so they will remember it and, above all, accurately so they will be guided by its light.

Make sure your message is clear, yet that you are faithful to its complexity.

Never be so brief as to become obscure.

The single most important lesson of effective communication is this: Focus on clarity. Concentrate on precisions. Don’t worry about constructing beautiful sentences. Beauty comes from meaning, not language. Accuracy is the most effective style of all.

I'd come to realize that all our troubles spring from our failure to use plain, clear-cut language.

When I struggle to be terse, I end by being obscure.

The main thing I try to do is write as clearly as I can. I rewrite a good deal to make it clear.

I counted solely on the clarity of expression of my work to gain my ends.

My liege, and madam, to expostulate What majesty should be, what duty is, Why day is day, night night, and time is time, Were nothing but to waste night, day and time. Therefore, since brevity is the soul of wit, And tediousness the limbs and outward flourishes, I will be brief.

Bad terminology is the enemy of good thinking.

The finest words in the world are only vain sounds if you can't understand them. The best sentence? The shortest.

The art of saying well what one thinks is different from the faculty of thinking. The latter may be very deep and lofty and far- reaching, while the former is altogether wanting.

You have to really know what you're saying.

If an author be supposed to involve his thoughts in voluntary obscurity, and to obstruct, by unnecessary difficulties, a mind eager in the pursuit of truth; if he writes not to make others learned, but to boast the learning which he possesses himself, and wishes to be admired rather than understood, he counteracts the first end of writing, and justly suffers the utmost severity of censure, or the more afflicting severity of neglect.

Is that clear?" said Borcht "as clear as pea soup" I said

Everything that can be said, can be said clearly.

To communicate, put your words in order; give them a purpose; use them to persuade, to instruct, to discover, to seduce.

Which, then, brings us closer to what we want to communicate: saying what we intend, or trying to say the opposite?

It is sheer laziness not compressing thought into a reasonable space.

I see but one rule: to be clear. If I am not clear, all my world crumbles to nothing.