Javed Akhtar Quotes

The ability to express an idea is well nigh as important as the idea itself.

Good writing is the hardest form of thinking. It involves the agony of turning profoundly difficult thoughts into lucid form, then forcing them into the tight-fitting uniform of language, making them visible and clear. If the writing is good, then the result seems effortless and inevitable. But when you want to say something life-changing or ineffable in a single sentence, you face both the limitations of the sentence itself and the extent of your own talent.

Language is the dress of thought.

Style is the dress of thoughts, and let them be ever so just.

The reason that clichés become clichés is that they are the hammers and screwdrivers in the toolbox of communication.

A word devoid of thought is a dead thing, and a thought unembodied in words remains a shadow.

Everything that can be thought at all can be thought clearly. Everything that can be said can be said clearly. Ludwig Wittgenstein

One can usually put one's thoughts better in one's own words.

Grammar is...the pole you grab to get your thoughts up on their feet and walking.

There's a power in words. There's a power in being able to explain and describe and articulate what you know and feel and believe about the world, and about yourself.

To make yourself understood you have to think plain and write plain.

A multitude of words is probably the most formidable means of blurring and obscuring thought. There is no thought, however momentous, that cannot be expressed lucidly in 200 words.

I thought clarity of communication was the most important thing in writing, and if you really cared about getting your idea across, you would say it in the most straightforward way possible. Later, in college and grad school, I came to realize that language is a technology like any other, and that it's always evolving - clarity of expression is always evolving.

Themistocles replied that a man's discourse was like to a rich Persian carpet, the beautiful figures and patterns of which can only be shown by spreading and extending it out; when it is contracted and folded up, they are obscured and lost.

A limited vocabulary, but one with which you can make numerous combinations, is better than thirty thousand words that only hamper the action of the mind.

Definite speech means clarity of mind.

I love words but I don't like strange ones. You don't understand them and they don't understand you. Old words is like old friends, you know 'em the minute you see 'em.

I think, in general, it's clear that most bad things come from misunderstanding, and communication is generally the way to resolve misunderstandings - and the Web's a form of communications - so it generally should be good.

Whatever we well understand we express clearly, and words flow with ease.

If you can't write clearly, you probably don't think nearly as well as you think you do.

When you forget yourself and your fear, when you get beyond self-consciousness because your mind is thinking about what you are trying to communicate, you become a better communicator

Language is the dress of thought; and as the noblest mien or most graceful action would be degraded and obscured by a garb appropriated to the gross employments of rusticks or mechanics, so the most heroick sentiments will lose their efficacy

The finest works of art are those in which there is the least matter. The closer expression comes to thought, the more the word clings to the idea and disappears, the more beautiful the work of art.

So what's the point of using words nobody else knows or can say comfortably? I just don't understand that.

Neither can embellishments of language be found without arrangement and expression of thoughts, nor can thoughts be made to shine without the light of language.