Theodor W. Adorno Quotes

Any woman who can’t say a four-letter word sometimes is deceitful.

Speech ... is an invention of man's to prevent him from thinking.

Expression, to a great extent, is a matter of terms, and terms are anyone's.

According to my wife, my use of vocabulary is wide and varied.

Expression and thought are inextricably linked: crude language permits only crude thinking.

I always prided myself on at least trying to be literate and use the right words, and if the audience didn't get it, then they could go home and look it up.

Man can no more think without words than see without light.

I have this little thing that people call Keegan-ese, where I don't speak English words at all. I just say stuff like, "You gotta toish the doish and you gotta maloish the hoish."

I never knew words could be so confusing," Milo said to Tock as he bent down to scratch the dog's ear. "Only when you use a lot to say a little," answered Tock. Milo thought this was quite the wisest thing he'd heard all day.

Trying to use words, and every attempt Is a wholly new start, and a different kind of failure Because one has only learnt to get the better of words For the thing one no longer has to say, or the way in which One is no longer disposed to say it. And so each venture Is a new beginning, a raid on the inarticulate With shabby equipment always deteriorating In the general mess of imprecision of feeling.

And yet, words are the passkeys to our souls. Without them, we can't really share the enormity of our lives.

Real thinking is possible only in the light of genuine language, no matter how limited, how primitive.

One word is worth a thousand pictures. If it's the right word.

Words, words. They're all we have to go on.

Damn words; they're just the pots and pans of life, the pails and scrubbing-brushes. I wish I didn't have to think in words.

The tongue of man is a twisty thing, there are plenty of words there of every kind.

I say what it occurs to me to say when I think I hear people say things. More I cannot say.

We live and breathe words.

Thanks to words, we have been able to rise above the brutes; and thanks to words, we have often sunk to the level of the demons.

The boy spoke two words, the first a short guttural verb, the second “you.

Technology is a vocabulary and a language in which you can say many things.

Why speak if you can't manage perfect thoughts, perfect sentences?

Words! Mere words! How terrible they were! How clear, and vivid, and cruel! One could not escape from them. And yet what a subtle magic there was in them!

There are many tongues to talk, and but few heads to think.