H. R. Haldeman Quotes

I'm very much afraid I didn't mean anything but nonsense. Still, you know, words mean more than we mean to express when we use them; so a whole book ought to mean a great deal more than the writer means. So, whatever good meanings are in the book, I'm glad to accept as the meaning of the book.

Words never mean what we want them to mean.

I believe the world is increasingly in danger of becoming split into groups which cannot communicate with each other, which no longer think of each other as members of the same species.

More has been screwed up on the battlefield and misunderstood in the Pentagon because of a lack of understanding of the English language than any other single factor.

It reminded me of talking, how what is said is never quite what was thought, and what is heard is never quite what was said. It wasn’t much in the way of comfort, but everything has a little failure in it, and we still make do somehow.

As soon as we start putting our thoughts into words and sentences everything gets distorted, language is just no damn good—I use it because I have to, but I don’t put any trust in it. We never understand each other.

Words mean more than we mean to express when we use them: so a whole book ought to mean a great deal more than the writer meant.

Nothing said in words ever came out quite even. Things in words got twisted and ran together, instead of staying straight and fitting together.

Language is the most beautiful and destructive thing because it allows you to express yourself, but it totally confuses everything.

How astonishing it is that language can almost mean, and frightening that it does not quite.

Definitions would be good things if we did not use words to make them.

It can be very dangerous to see things from somebody else's point of view without the proper training.

What are you? (Danger) Well, had you listened before you stabbed me, you would have heard the ‘I’m Acheron’s Squire’ part. Apparently that somehow escaped your hearing and you mistook me for a pin cushion. (Alexion)

Words are like money; there is nothing so useless, unless when in actual use.

What should we gain by a definition, as it can only lead us to other undefined terms?

People will listen to sophisticated physicists, using God as a kind of metaphor for the deep constants, the deep problems, the deep principles of physics, and say that in that sense I believe in God. The reaction is, "Oh, this great physicist believes in God - that means I'm free to believe in the trinity and in the crucifixion and in the reincarnation of Christ" - and all that stuff, which of course has nothing whatever to do with the fundamental constants of physics, which is what these physicists are talking about.

Two nations divided by a common language.

A false or misunderstood word may create as much disaster as a sudden thoughtless act.

Language is the source of misunderstandings.

Imperfect understanding is often more dangerous than ignorance.

Words also are filters. They have to be translated. Even in the original language, there is interpretation and some ambiguity. If there's a cultural difference between the writer and the reader, that might come out in words. But with pictures, there's more efficiency.

The existing phrasebooks are inadequate. They are well enough as far as they go, but when you fall down and skin your leg they don't tell you what to say.

Have you ever considered, beloved other, how invisible we are to each other? We look at each other without seeing. We listen to each other and hear only a voice inside out self. The words of others are mistakes of our hearing, shipwrecks of our understanding. How confidently we believe OUR meanings of other people's words.

A garbled quotation is equivalent to a betrayal, an insult, a prejudice.

There is no use indicting words, they are no shoddier than what they peddle.