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Bergen Evans

(1904–1978) Lexicographer

24 quotes in 142 categories

Bergen Evans was a lexicographer.

Quick Facts About Bergen Evans

Born: September 19, 1904
Died: February 4, 1978
Profession: Lexicographer

About Bergen Evans

[Wikidata] American lexicographer (1904–1978)... | [Wikipedia] Bergen Baldwin Evans was a Northwestern University professor of English and a television host. He received a George Foster Peabody Award in 1957 for excellence in broadcasting for his CBS TV series The Last Word.

Quotes by Bergen Evans

Many studies have established the fact that there is a high correlation between vocabulary and intelligence and that the ability to increase…

Ability

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We see what we want to see, and observation conforms to hypothesis.

Conform

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Legislators who are of even average intelligence stand out among their colleagues. . . . A cultured college president has become as…

Average

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Stoicism is the wisdom of madness and cynicism the madness of wisdom.

Cynicism

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Wisdom is meaningless until your own experience has given it meaning, and there is wisdom in the selection of wisdom.

Given

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It (the dash ) is a comfortable punctuation mark since even the most rigorous critic can seldom claim that any particular example…

Claims

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“We may be done with the past but the past is not done with us. Show more Show less”

Time

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There is wisdom in the selection of wisdom....

Democracy

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There is no necessary connection between the desire to lead and the ability to lead, and even less the ability to lead…

Ability

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That is the essence of a witch-hunt, that any questioning of the evidence or the procedures in itself constitutes proof of complicity.

Complicity

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Leadership is more likely to be assumed by the aggressive than by the able, and those who scramble to the top are…

Able

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The mere abhorrence of vice is not a virtue at all.

Abhorrence

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“Euphemisms persist because lying is an indispensable part of making life tolerable.”

Euphemisms

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An honorable man will not be bullied by a hypothesis.

Bullied

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Speech is highly elliptical. It would scarcely be endurable otherwise. Ellipsis is indispensable to the writer or speaker who wants to be…

Causes

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Lying is an indispensable part of making life tolerable.

Indispensable

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Freedom of speech and freedom of action are meaningless without freedom to think. And there is no freedom of thought without doubt.

Action

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We may be through with the past, but the past is not through with us.

Inspirational

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Authors are magpies, echoing each other's words and seizing avidly on anything that glitters.

Books

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For the most part our leaders are merely following out in front; they do but marshal us the way that we are…

Following

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The civilized man has a moral obligation to be skeptical. . . . Any man who for one moment abandons or suspends…

Abandon

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Most civilized lives are measured out with coffee spoons.

Civilized

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The civilized man has a moral obligation to be skeptical, to demand the credentials of all statements that claim to be facts.

Character

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Words are one of our chief means of adjusting to all the situations of life. The better control we have over words,…

Adjusting

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