John McCaslin Quotes

I really value words. I really try to illustrate and let people draw their own conclusions.

All speech, written or spoken, is a dead language, until it finds a willing and prepared hearer.

It's not what you say, it's what people hear.

Before any of it could make sense, it had to be heard.

It is the man determines what is said, not the words.

Paper and ink are all but trash, if I cannot find the thought which the writer did think.

Symbols are the imaginative signposts of life.

The trouble with words is that you never know whose mouths they have been in.

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

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

I have no message.

He who does not understand your silence will probably not understand your words.

I have never had a problem with people not being able to understand the words and the meanings in Titus.

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

If you hear the question wrong, you will answer wrong.

What is the short meaning of the long speech?

Words are slippery and thoughts are vicious.

A man hears only what he understands.

Sometimes, when I do certain looks, I don't want the intention to be taken out of context or expressed in the wrong way.

I want people to make sense of what I'm talking about.

I say what it occurs to me to say when I think I hear people say things. More I cannot say.

The surest way to make a monkey of a man is to quote him. That remark in itself wouldn’t make any sense if quoted as it stands. The average man ought to be allowed a quotation of no less than three sentences, one to make his statement and two to explain what he meant. Ralph Waldo Emerson was about the only one who could stand having his utterances broken up into sentence quotations, and every once in a while even he doesn’t sound so sensible in short snatches.

One of the hardest things in the world is to convey a meaning accurately from one mind to another.

Hey can mean anything. It can mean yes, it can mean maybe, it could mean no, it could mean next week. Hey, the bottom line is you have to understand me to understand hey.