Gloria Naylor Quotes

Words have users, but as well, users have words. And it is the users that establish the world's realities.

You can't forge a new sort of consensus, you can't forge public opinion, by following public opinion.

We tend to look through language and not realize how much power language has.

What we call reality is an agreement that people have arrived at to make life more livable.

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

I look for the consensus because the consensus drives the policy into new places.

It shows the truth - that the real meaning of a word is only as powerful or harmless as the emotion behind it.

Whoever defines the word, defines the world.

In Mexico, the perception of power is power.

A swarm finds the solution people best agree upon. It optimizes collective support, whereas a poll tells us how we disagree.

They're just words is all. Powerless. Vocabulary. Dialogue.

It is unfortunately none too well understood that, just as the State has no money of its own, so it has no power of its own. All the power it has is what society gives it, plus what it confiscates from time to time on one pretext or another, there is no other source from which State power can be drawn. Therefore every assumption of State power, whether by gift or seizure leaves society with so much less power; there is never, nor can be, any strengthening of State power without a corresponding and roughly equivalent depletion of social power.

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

The power of language, it seems to me, is the only kind of power a writer is entitled to.

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

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.

Words are never 'only words'; they matter because they define the contours of what we can do.

The magic of words is that they have power to do more than convey meaning; not only do they have the power to make things clear, they make things happen.

The old idea that words possess magical powers is false; but its falsity is the distortion of a very important truth. Words do have a magical effect - but not in the way that magicians supposed, and not on the objects they were trying to influence. Words are magical in the way they affect the minds of those who use them.

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.

What we name must answer to us; we can shape it if not control it.

Words are such small things, like confetti in the brain, and yet they are color and clarify everything, they can stain the mind or warp the feelings.

Reaching and understanding is the process of bringing about an agreement on the presupposed basis of validity claims that are mutually recognized.

Words are the litmus paper of the minds. If you find yourself in the power of someone who will use the word "commence" in cold blood, go somewhere else very quickly. But if they say "Enter", don't stop to pack.