Martin H. Fischer Quotes

Abuse of words has been the great instrument of sophistry and chicanery, of party, faction, and division of society.

I remember reading once that some fellows use language to conceal thought; but it's been my experience that a good many more use it instead of thought.

When an idea is wanting, a word can always be found to take its place.

An expenditure of words without income of ideas will lead to intellectual bankruptcy.

As a scholar I am interested in the philosophy of language, semiotics, call it what you want, and one of the main features of the human language is the possibility of lying.

When ideas fail, words come in very handy.

The Prime Minister has an absolute genius for putting flamboyant labels on empty luggage.

The nature of politics is to subtract meaning from language.

I would engage in a sort of syntax destruction that would sound like I was answering the question but actually was not.

I must say I'm not very fond of oratory that's so full of energy it hasn't any room for facts.

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

It's amazing how people believe you if you use long words.

For, I must tell you, in this world where today all lose their minds over many & wondrous Machines - some of which, alas, you can see also in this Siege - I construct Aristotelian Machines, that allow anyone to see with Words.

Punctuationally speaking, wonder is a period at the end of a statement we've long taken for granted, suddenly looking up and seeing the sinuous curve of a tall black hat on its head, and realizing it was a question mark all along.

Writing has nothing to do with meaning. It has to do with landsurveying and cartography, including the mapping of countries yet to come.

Among the Igbo the art of conversation is regarded very highly, and proverbs are the palm-oil with which words are eaten.

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

Speech is the mother, not the handmaid, of thought.

The most incomprehensible talk comes from people who have no other use for language than to make themselves understood.

The things that mount the rostrum with a skip, And then skip down again, pronounce a text, Cry hem; and reading what they never wrote Just fifteen minutes, huddle up their work, And with a well-bred whisper close the scene!

we have not been impressed with any attribute of the Senate other than its appearance and manners. We have heard the best speakers: they all fire off speeches which deal with the entire subject in general terms and which do not attempt to debate, to answer opponents' arguments or offer new points for discussion. And the speeches are constantly degenerating into empty rhetoric; they abound in quotations from well-known authors or from their own former speeches.

The misuse of language induces evil in the soul.

Unconsciously I had discovered the commentator's secret weapon-that so long as you can wield words, it isn't necessary to know what you're talking about.

One of our defects as a nation is a tendency to use what have been called ''weasel words.'' When a weasel sucks eggs the meat is sucked out of the egg. If you use a ''weasel word'' after another there is nothing left of the other.