Michael Nesmith Quotes

Language is a tool adequate to provide any degree of precision relevant to a particular situation.

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

All our work, our whole life is a matter of semantics, because words are the tools with which we work, the material out of which laws are made, out of which the Constitution was written. Everything depends on our understanding of them.

It's technically extremely difficult to get down what you really mean, not what you think you mean, or what you think sounds good, but what's really there, what you really have to express, in words that somehow convey that meaning in an approximate way.

I think the close work I do as a translator pays off in my writing - I'm always searching for multiple ways to say things.

There is no greater impediment to the advancement of knowledge than the ambiguity of words.

Words, like glasses, obscure everything they do not make clear. Before using a fine word, make a place for it.

Words... They're innocent, neutral, precise, standing for this, describing that, meaning the other, so if you look after them you can build bridges across incomprehension and chaos. But when they get their corners knocked off, they're no good any more... I don't think writers are sacred, but words are. They deserve respect. If you get the right ones in the right order, you can nudge the world a little or make a poem which children will speak for you when you're dead.

People like to say, 'What do you mean exactly?' I would answer, 'I mean, but not exactly.'

The difference between the almost right word and the right word is really a large matter - 'tis the difference between the lightning-bug and the lightning.

Where questions of style and exposition are concerned I try to follow a simple maxim: if you can't say it clearly you don't understand it yourself.

The right word fitly spoken is a precious rarity.

Something's that written out is okay, but it's not always a clear indication of what a person means.

Those who write clearly have readers, those who write obscurely have commentators.

The whole purpose of writing a book is to be understood - if other people write about you, they try to guess why you did things, or they hear things from other people.

The medium is not the message - the message is the message.

I love the right words. I think economy and precision of language are important.

You can not apply mathematics as long as words still becloud reality.

I believe words mean something. I really do.

Language is powerful. Words matter.

It all depends what you mean by.

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.

Bad terminology is the enemy of good thinking.

Everything that can be said, can be said clearly.

Words are like eyeglasses they blur everything that they do not make clear.