#words

As we express our gratitude, we must never forget that the highest appreciation is not to utter words, but to live by them. ↗

— John F. Kennedy

#express #forget #gratitude #highest #live

I am often described to my irritation as a 'contrarian' and even had the title inflicted on me by the publisher of one of my early books. (At least on that occasion I lived up to the title by ridiculing the word in my introduction to the book's first chapter.) It is actually a pity that our culture doesn't have a good vernacular word for an oppositionist or even for someone who tries to do his own thinking: the word 'dissident' can't be self-conferred because it is really a title of honor that has to be won or earned, while terms like 'gadfly' or 'maverick' are somehow trivial and condescending as well as over-full of self-regard. And I've lost count of the number of memoirs by old comrades or ex-comrades that have titles like 'Against the Stream,' 'Against the Current,' 'Minority of One,' 'Breaking Ranks' and so forth—all of them lending point to Harold Rosenberg's withering remark about 'the herd of independent minds.' Even when I was quite young I disliked being called a 'rebel': it seemed to make the patronizing suggestion that 'questioning authority' was part of a 'phase' through which I would naturally go. On the contrary, I was a relatively well-behaved and well-mannered boy, and chose my battles with some deliberation rather than just thinking with my hormones. ↗

— Christopher Hitchens

#contrarianism #dissent #dissidents #free-thought #harold-rosenberg

Writing has nothing to do with meaning. It has to do with landsurveying and cartography, including the mapping of countries yet to come. ↗

— Gilles Deleuze

#organized-chaos #power-of-words #writing #chaos

I never met a word I didn't love ↗

— Gail Carson Levine

#words #writing #love

He had a word, too. Love, he called it. But I had been used to words for a long time. I knew that that word was like the others: just a shape to fill a lack; that when the right time came, you wouldn't need a word for that anymore than for pride or fear. ↗

— William Faulkner

#words #love

Thomas loved words, particularly if he didn’t understand them. ↗

— Guus Kuijer

#love

Words form the sinew and muscle that hold societies upright, he argued. Consider the Koran, the Bible, the American Constitution, but also letters from fathers to sons, last wills, blessings, curses. Thousands upon thousands of words infused with the full spectrum of emotions fill in the nooks and corners of human life. ↗

— National Geographic Magazine

#life #love #words #words-of-wisdom #love

Sometimes poetry--words--give us a small, lovely look at ourselves. And sometimes that is enough. ↗

— Patricia MacLachlan

#poetry #words #love

The rabbis paled. I’d managed to terrify holy men. Maybe I could beat up a nun for an encore. ↗

— Ilona Andrews

#power-words #self-deprecating #men

It is a press, certainly, but a press from which shall flow in inexhaustible streams...Through it, God will spread His Word. A spring of truth shall flow from it: like a new star it shall scatter the darkness of ignorance, and cause a light heretofore unknown to shine amongst men ↗

— Johannes Gutenberg

#press #print #words #men