Marcel Proust Quotes

Without a possibility of change in meanings human communication could not perform its present functions.

The matter does not appear to me now as it has appears to have appeared to me then.

I'm starting to believe in the power of a name. Because it can't be a mistake if I just call it 'change.'

Change is legitimate and inevitable, for our language is a mighty river, picking up silt and flotsam here and discarding it there, but growing ever wider and richer.

You know, words have strange destiny, too. They grow. They get old. They die. They come back.

Words don't change their shape, they change their meaning, their function...They don't have a meaning of their own any more, they refer to other words that you don't know, that you've never read or heard...you've never seen their shape, but you feel...you suspect...they correspond to...an empty space inside you...or in the universe.

Nor can one word be chang'd but for a worse.

Words contract a significance which clings to them long after the condition of things to which they owe it has passed away.

Before the effect one believes in different causes than one does after the effect.

Language changes very fast.

Writers begin changing the instant they append 'The End' to a novel. Readers begin changing the moment they encounter that same phrase. And even the novels themselves, through the strange transmutations of time and shifting tastes and mores, exhibit changes as we look backward upon them, acquiring retroactive meanings and tonalities.

I think that's the greatest gift one can have: point of view. You know? I've come to believe that if you have a bad memory of something, change it.

Words have a genealogy and it's easier to trace the evolution of a single word than the evolution of a language.

Words take on many different meanings.

However, the word madda in modern Hebrew specifically means science.

At a certain point, what people mean when they use a word becomes its meaning.

To understand a word, we need to learn where it was born, what paths it took to reach where it is today, and how it has changed along the way. The word 'nice' is a positive word today, but hundreds of years ago, it meant 'stupid.'

Rather than being an interpreter, the scientist who embraces a new paradigm is like the man wearing inverting lenses.

Studies have shown that 90% of error in thinking is due to error in perception. If you can change your perception, you can change your emotion and this can lead to new ideas.

To me, great advertising can make food taste better, can make your car run smoother. It can change your perception of something. Is it wrong to change your perception about something? Of course not. I'm not lying; I'm just saying, 'This one's more fun, this one's more exciting.'

Words change over time. 'Condescending,' for instance, was once a good thing to be. It meant that a person was willing to interact politely with people of lower social ranks. In Jane Austen's world, a lady praised for her condescension was receiving a sincere compliment.

I was thinking of writing a little foreword saying that history is, after all, based on people's recollections, which change with time.

Change will come slowly, across generations, because old beliefs die hard even when demonstrably false.

For to change the norms, the very foci of attention, of a cultural system is a difficult task - far more complex than that of changing an individual's attitudes and interests.

They can't just tell everybody else to ignore all the other meanings that it's accrued..