He mobilized the English language and sent it into battle.
My words are my bullets.
But I felt certain that if the world would stop indulging wars and famines and other perils, it would be possible for human beings to embarrass each other to death. Our self-destruction might take a little longer that way, but I believe it would be no less complete.
I was bright, and I could use that as a weapon: words can wound, whatever those sticks and stones sayings claim about them never hurting, and I could use them if I had to.
Wars are not fought for territory, but for words. Man's deadliest weapon is language. He is as susceptible to being hypnotized by slogans as he is to infectious diseases. And where there is an epidemic, the group-mind takes over.
He seems to have declared war on the King’s English as well as on the English king.
My weapon has always been language, and I've always used it, but it has changed. Instead of shaping the words like knives now, I think they're flowers, or bridges.
Too many people spouting too many words, and in the end those words will turn to bullets and stones.
Fortunately, war in Latin America is usually waged only with words. The tongue is our most dangerous weapon. We talk too much!
There is no weapon in the end as difficult to overcome as the tongue of an enemy.
In previous armies, soldiers used their time to clean their weapons and stock up on ammunition. Our weapons are words, and we may need our arsenal at any moment.
Words are weapons, and it is dangerous . . . to borrow them from the arsenal of the enemy.
REPARTEE, n. Prudent insult in retort. Practiced by gentlemen with a constitutional aversion to violence, but a strong disposition to offend. In a war of words, the tactics of the North American Indian.
