Impression Quote by Benjamin Hoff

“Now one rather annoying thing about scholars is that they are always using Big Words that some of us can't understand ... and one…

— Benjamin Hoff

“Now one rather annoying thing about scholars is that they are always using big words that some of us can't understand and one sometimes…

— Benjamin Hoff

It is by no means necessary to understand things to speak confidently about them.

— Pierre Beaumarchais

...if you do not even understand what words say, how can you expect to pass judgement on what words conceal?

— Hilda Doolittle

“The fact is that very few of us know what words mean; fewer still take the trouble to enquire. We calmly, we carelessly assume…

— Aleister Crowley

Good scholars struggle to understand the world in an integral way (pedants bite off tiny bits and worry them to death). These visions of…

— Stephen Jay Gould

The ill and unfit choice of words wonderfully obstructs the understanding.

— Francis Bacon

The one thing - apart from assumptions about German - that I have to challenge frequently is people assuming that lexicographers are fierce protectors…

— Susie Dent

It is by discourse that men associate, and words are imposed according to the apprehension of the vulgar. And therefore the ill and unfit…

— Francis Bacon

“Those people who say that words have no power know nothing of the nature of words”

— Joanne Harris

“The search for knowledge demands foregoing the pleasures of companionship, but this is usually understood to mean frivolous and unprofi table human relations. Knowledge…

— Franz Rosenthal

Vague and mysterious forms of speech, and abuse of language, have so long passed for mysteries of science; and hard or misapplied words with…

— John Locke