Bertrand Russell Quotes

Regarding language as an apparatus of symbols for the conveyance of thought, we may say that, as in a mechanical apparatus, the more simple and the better arranged its parts, the greater will be the effect produced.

It was an instinct to put the world in order that powered her mending split infinitives and snipping off dangling participles, smoothing away the knots and bumps until the prose before her took on a sheen, like perfect caramel.

The way that words fit together is always interesting to me. I love words.

Anybody who comes to you and says he has a perfect language is either naive or a salesman.

that your power of command with simple language was one of the magnificent things of our century. (from the poem: result)

When you're selling a product or service, you don't have - it doesn't have to be absolutely perfect, although I've provided language that is. When you're a politician, one wrong word changes the entire - changes the meaning of something.

So mathematical truth prefers simple words since the language of truth is itself simple.

Perfect grammar - persistent, continuous, sustained - is the fourth dimension, so to speak; many have sought it, but none has found it.

We think only through the medium of words. Languages are true analytical methods. Algebra, which is adapted to its purpose in every species of expression, in the most simple, most exact, and best manner possible, is at the same time a language and an analytical method. The art of reasoning is nothing more than a language well arranged.

The language of truth is simple.

Only in grammar can you be more than perfect.

Easily acquired. Inexpensive. Perfectly functional. Portable. Identifiable. Disposable. Eternal enough. These are my criteria for the perfect storage system. And I’ve found the answer in the simple file box.

A sentence is not emotional a paragraph is.

It seems to me that right under the surface of human neurological organization is a mode shift of some sort that would make language beholdable.

I've never said I'm immortal. I do believe in correct language. I'm eternal; I'm not immortal.

I do not pretend that language is science. It isan instrument for the attainment of science.

Then suddenly, he was struck by a powerful but simple little truth, and it was this: that English grammar is governed by rules that are almost mathematical in their strictness!

Reason" in language - oh, what an old deceptive female she is! I am afraid we are not rid of God because we still have faith in grammar.

Novel writing, to me, is all about language: choosing your words, finding the characters within the words and just really agonizing over every word. It's really crafting this whole piece from nothing.

The human language, as precise as it is with its thousands of words, can still be so wonderfully vague.

Rigour and purity in assembling words, however simple the result, create a vacuum.

The past is always tense, the future perfect.

Language always pre-exists us: it is always already 'in place', waiting to assign us our places within it.

It is not humanly possible to gather immediately from it what the logic of language is. Language disguises thought.

Greek is doubtless the most perfect [language] that has been contrived by the art of man.