Robert Farrar Capon Quotes

I don't think the mystical experience can be verbalized. When the ego disappears, so does power over language.

I think one of the things helping Donald Trump is, he hasn't known what he can't do. It's not in his vernacular. It's not in his vocabulary. It's not in his way of thinking what he can't do, what you're not supposed to do.

I love words, I think they're fascinating and incredibly wonderful things and part of the joy of my work is that I not only get to work with music but also with words. Sometimes it's a difficult process but a lot of the time it's really fun.

One cannot explain words without making incursions into the sciences themselves, as is evident from dictionaries; and, conversely, one cannot present a science without at the same time defining its terms.

Life's complicated and people do things for a lot of reasons. I think if you live in a black-and-white world, you're gonna suffer a lot. I used to be like that. But I don't believe that anymore.

Will I have to use a dictionary to read your book?" asked Mrs. Dodypol. "It depends," says I, "how much you used the dictionary before you read it.

Tempests, and bright lightnings, are to be sung; their nature is to be told, and from what cause they pursue their course; lest, having foolishly divided the heaven into parts, you should be anxious as to the quarter from which the flying flame may come, or to what region it may betake itself; and tremble to think how it penetrates through walled enclosures, and how, having exercised its power, it extricates itself from them. Of which phenomena the multitude can by no means see the causes, and think that they are accomplished by supernatural power.

The world is full of wonders that cannot be measured. That is why they are wonders.

When I think of mystery, I don't think about myself. I think of the universe, like why does the moon rise when the sun falls? Caterpillars turn into butterflies? I really haven't remained a recluse.

Whoever is versed in the jargon does not have to say what he thinks, does not even have to think it properly. The jargon takes over this task.

I now believe there is a God...I now think it [the evidence] does point to a creative Intelligence almost entirely because of the DNA investigations. What I think the DNA material has done is that it has shown, by the almost unbelievable complexity of the arrangements which which are needed to produce life, that intelligence must have been involved in getting these extraordinarily diverse elements to work together.

I can get by and chatter and talk and tell funny stories, make people laugh, but I don't have as many words, I don't have the vocabulary. I think if I forced myself to read in Spanish - you know, I always say I'm going to, but I lose my patience reading in Spanish, because I really do read the way a third grader does, mouthing the words. That takes a long time!

When we have told how things behave when they are electrified, and under what circumstances they are electrified, we have told all there is to know

I wouldn't like to live in a world where everything's as cut-and-dried as most people think it is

I was involved in trying to save the Rwandan people and Sudan now. It's a mass murder. Mass murder is a terrifying word. We don't have to go further than that. Cambodia came close to, but what was it, Cambodians killing Cambodians after all. So therefore I think we should be very careful with vocabulary.

A backup plan means somewhere in my head, I think I might fail and that word is not in my vocabulary. Plus I'm too talented to fail.

Compromise is not popular. It's not at all popular among young people who these days call themselves "activists." They think compromises are dishonest, opportunistic, humiliating. Not in my vocabulary.

Fear is not a part of my vocabulary, actually, and I think that it's really made me a much smarter, braver for sure, person.

Life is amazing, life is odd. Life is not what you expected it to be. Things happen... Growing up takes longer than you think.

All that is not thought is pure nothingness; since we can think only thoughts, and all the words we use to speak of things can express only thoughts, to say there is something other than thought is therefore an affirmation which can have no meaning.

I think I feel in love with words before I feel in love with music.

We see something change in our climate and we blame ourselves ... I don't think we understand what happens. We can watch it happen on the (climate) models, we know it happens, but we don't know for sure how it happens.

Our bad luck is that our writing is linear, while we think circularly.

How do I feel when I am invited to a congregation of scientists? I feel quite at home. When they break into their cultic scientific argot, I know when I'm not wanted and step out for a drink.

I just don't think people get off on language anymore. Language used to be an elevated art. It used to be for people what music can be. But people don't learn to do that anymore, so eloquence is merely a matter of waste. Who needs a good vocabulary and proper English? Eloquence - it's dead and who needs it?