Barton Swaim Quotes

Weasel Words

The politician is ... trained in the art of inexactitude. His words tend to be blunt or rounded, because if they have a cutting edge, they may later return to wound him.

I know how easy it is for one to stay well within moral, ethical, and legal bounds through the skillful use of words - and to thereby spin, sidestep, circumvent, or bend a truth completely out of shape. To that extent, we are all liars on numerous occasions.

You don't tell deliberate lies, but sometimes you have to be evasive.

That's not a lie, it's a terminological inexactitude.

Be careful what you say. Words matter. Words really matter in foreign policy.

If that comes up, I'll just confuse them.

Language can be used to so many diverse ends. It can be used to clarify and, of course, it can be used to obfuscate, confuse, evade.

If you can't convince them, confuse them.

The really great thing about having two TV shows going on at the same time is that I can go to one and say that I have to go and visit the other, and then I can just go home, and they don't know.

Eloquence, n. The art of orally persuading fools that white is the color that it appears to be. It includes the gift of making any color appear white.

I can talk a lot and not reveal anything; I would make a great politician.

A good portion of speaking will consist in knowing how to lie.

The nature of politics is to subtract meaning from language.

Mr. Trump regularly lies and, when confronted with contrary evidence, he lies louder.

You'd make a great Secretary of State because State Department personnel don't answer questions completely either.

Most of us in Congress steal our speeches.

Figures won’t lie but liars will figure.

The Politician uses the language of diplomacy of which he is a master, and it consists in telling some of the truth without necessarily exhausting it.

Political language -- and with variations this is true of all political parties, from Conservatives to Anarchists -- is designed to make lies sound truthful and murder respectable, and to give an appearance of solidity to pure wind.

terminological inexactitude

We need to become more acutely conscious that words matter. None of us would deny that ideas and opinions matter, but we can sometimes be careless about how we express them. The words we choose to advance an idea, opinion, or point of view have a huge impact on how people react and respond to that view. When we use hyperbole, we increase the chances of being misunderstood and of promoting equally exaggerated counter-reactions, especially when people are reacting almost instantaneously.

If I take refuge in ambiguity, I assure you that it’s quite conscious.

Trump is a master obfuscator. Like an octopus escaping a predator, he releases a cloud of ink when called to the carpet on one of his many lies. His strategy? Obfuscate, then reference others. 'Millions agree,' 'everyone knows,' 'many have done it.'

Oh, they never lie. They dissemble, evade, prevaricate, confound, confuse, distract, obscure, subtly misrepresent and willfully misunderstand with what often appears to be a positively gleeful relish and are generally perfectly capable of contriving to give one an utterly unambiguous impression of their future course of action while in fact intending to do exactly the opposite, but they never lie. Perish the thought.