Deborah Tannen Quotes

Language exerts hidden power, like the moon on the tides.

I think with all my books, language has been their subject as much as anything else. Language can elide or displace or sideline whole groups of people. You can't necessarily change the way language is used, but if it becomes something you're conscious of... that gives you a certain power over it.

Language is power... Language can be used as a means of changing reality.

Words are seductive and dangerous material, to be used with caution.

Man acts as though he were the shaper and master of language, while in fact language remains the master of man.

The basic tool for the manipulation of reality is the manipulation of words. If you can control the meaning of words, you can control the people who must use the words.

Language is legislation, speech is its code. We do not see the power which is in speech because we forget that all speech is a classification, and that all classifications are oppressive.

I have been a believer in the magic of language since, at a very early age, I discovered that some words got me into trouble and others got me out.

Further, I'm obsessed with how language contorts and creates bodies.

There's no doubt in my mind that 'Slam' is going to be huge. It's a film about the power of language. People are going to see this and get blown away.

He who wants to persuade should put his trust, not in the right argument, but in the right word.

We use language that has been designed to keep order, and to keep people in line.

I don't remember a time when words were not dangerous.

Why and how are words so important that they cannot be too often used.

Words are magical in the way they affect the minds of those who use them.

Your words are containers for power, and by the words you speak you frame your world!

The turn of a sentence has decided the fate of many a friendship, and, for aught that we know, the fate of many a kingdom.

I am by nature a dealer in words, and words are the most powerful drug known to humanity.

Words can do wonderful things. They pound, purr. They can urge, they can wheedle, whip, whine. They can sing, sass, singe. They can churn, check, channelize. They can be a "Hup two three four." They can forge a fiery army of a hundred languid men.

The mother tongue is propaganda.

Words are your business, boy. Not just the word. Words are everything. The key to the rock, the answer to the question.

Language is power, life and the instrument of culture, the instrument of domination and liberation.

Words are so awesome. Words are containers for power. They carry either creative power or destructive power.

The art of those who govern consists above all in the science of employing words.

I believe that words can help us move or keep us paralyzed, and that our choices of language and verbal tone have something - a great deal - to do with how we live our lives.