language

"I am not yet so lost in lexicography, as to forget that words are the daughters of earth, and that things are the sons of heaven."

"In a certain sense lexicography may be considered a superior discipline to lexicology, for results are more important than intentions and the value of theoretical principles must be estimated according to results."

"Editing a dictionary isn’t like editing any other book or magazine," the professor pointed out. "It’s a peculiar world. You need extreme patience, a capacity for endless minutiae, a love of words bordering on obsession, and a broad enough outlook to stay sane. What makes you think there are any young people like that nowadays?"

"The class which has the means of material production at its disposal has control over the means of mental production, so that in consequence the ideas of those who lack the means of mental production are, in general, subject to it."

"The Citizens of the United States of America have a right to applaud themselves for having given to mankind examples of an enlarged and liberal policy: a policy worthy of imitation. All possess alike liberty of conscience and immunities of citizenship. It is now no more that toleration is spoken of, as if it was by the indulgence of one class of people, that another enjoyed the exercise of their inherent natural rights. For happily the Government of the United States, which gives to bigotry no sanction, to persecution no assistance requires only that they who live under its protection should demean themselves as good citizens, in giving it on all occasions their effectual support."

"Psychology is now able to tell us with reasonable assurance that the most influential obstacle to freedom of thought and to new ideas is fear; and fear which can with inimitable art disguise itself as caution or sanity or reasoned scepticism or on occasion even as courage."

"La propagande de l'erreur est libre: liberté de pensée!"

"Liberty of conscience was the one great value which the common people had preserved from the Commonwealth. The countryside was ruled by the gentry, the towns by corrupt corporations, the nation by the corruptest corporation of all: but the chapel, the tavern and the home were their own. In the "unsteepled" places of worship there was room for a free intellectual life and for democratic experiments with "members unlimited". Against the background of London Dissent, with its fringe of deists and earnest mystics, William Blake seems no longer the cranky untutored genius that he must seem to those who know only the genteel culture of the time. On the contrary, he is the original yet authentic voice of a long popular tradition. If some of the London Jacobins were strangely unperturbed by the execution of Louis and Marie Antoinette it was because they remembered that their own forebears had once executed a king. No one with Bunyan in their bones could have found many of Blake's aphorisms strange: "The strongest poison ever known \ Game from Caesar's laurel crown.""

"If it is the drive of our time, after freedom of thought is won, to pursue it to that perfection through which it changes to freedom of the will in order to realize the latter as the principle of a new era."

"“The biggest gift from God to man is a free mind,” [Uyghur-man Örkesh Davlet] said."

"The most unpardonable sin in society is independence of thought."

"The freedom of thought is a sacred right of every individual man, and diversity will continue to increase with the progress, refinement, and differentiation of the human intellect."

"But arms – instrumentalities, as President Wilson called them – are not sufficient by themselves. We must add to them the power of ideas. People say we ought not to allow ourselves to be drawn into a theoretical antagonism between Nazidom and democracy; but the antagonism is here now. It is this very conflict of spiritual and moral ideas which gives the free countries a great part of their strength. You see these dictators on their pedestals, surrounded by the bayonets of their soldiers and the truncheons of their police. On all sides they are guarded by masses of armed men, cannons, aeroplanes, fortifications, and the like – they boast and vaunt themselves before the world, yet in their hearts there is unspoken fear. They are afraid of words and thoughts; words spoken abroad, thoughts stirring at home – all the more powerful because forbidden – terrify them. A little mouse of thought appears in the room, and even the mightiest potentates are thrown into panic. They make frantic efforts to bar our thoughts and words; they are afraid of the workings of the human mind. Cannons, airplanes, they can manufacture in large quantities; but how are they to quell the natural promptings of human nature, which after all these centuries of trial and progress has inherited a whole armoury of potent and indestructible knowledge?"

"Jules Winnfield: What ain't no country I've ever heard of, do they speak English in What?"

"Whether anybody comes to convince me or not, a part of my life does always ache arresting my chest."

"Doch ein gekränktes Herz erholt sich schwer."

"My heart didn't want to believe it, but the truth was right in front of me."

"Insults have broken my heart and left me weak"

"I’ve climbed up here holding the hilt of time’s sword after driving it into my tender heart."

"Who needs a heart, when a heart can be broken?"

"Tell General Howard I know his heart. What he told me before, I have it in my heart. [...] Hear me, my Chiefs! I am tired; my heart is sick and sad. From where the Sun now stands, I will fight no more forever."

"Never morning wore To evening, but some heart did break."

"I'll break your heart to keep you far from where all danger starts"

"May Inana pour oil on my heart that aches."

"Taking intellectual property, traditional knowledge, cultural expressions, or artifacts from someone else's culture without permission. This can include unauthorized use of another culture's dance, dress, music, language, folklore, cuisine, traditional medicine, religious symbols, etc. It is most likely to be harmful when the source community is a minority group that has been oppressed or exploited in other ways or when the object of appropriation is particularly sensitive, e.g. sacred objects."

"What happens further in the Plastic Shaman's [fictitious] story is highly irritating from a perspective of cultural hegemony. The Injun elder does not only willingly share their spirituality with the white intruder but, in fact, must come to the conclusion that this intruder is as good an Indian as they are themselves. Regarding Indian spirituality, the Plastic Shaman even out-Indians the actual ones. The messianic element, which Plastic Shamanism financially draws on, is installed in the Yoda-like elder themselves. They are the ones – while melodramatically parting from their spiritual offshoot – who urge the Plastic Shaman to share their gift with the rest of the world. Thus Plastic Shamans wipe their hands clean of any megalomaniac or missionizing undertones. Licensed by the authority of an Indian elder, they now have every right to spread their wisdom, and if they make (quite more than) a buck with it, then so be it.—The neocolonial ideology attached to this scenario leaves less room for cynicism."

"One need not look far to see that Hollywood often fails to provide both representation of, and employment to, members of marginalized communities. Movements like #OscarsSoWhite, and continued pushback against cisgender actors playing trans roles, have been increasingly covered in media the past few years. Yet the Gay for Pay Problem has not had the same attention, at least in the recent past, as other ways that Hollywood is willing to tell stories from marginalized groups without hiring marginalized people."

"We assert a posture of zero-tolerance for any "white man's shaman" who rises from within our own communities to "authorize" the expropriation of our ceremonial ways by non-Indians; all such "plastic medicine men" are enemies of the Lakota, Dakota and Nakota people."

"The problem is, as with most everything, there’s a certain subjectivity to the entire affair. Intent can be difficult to discern, and it’s certainly not quantifiable in any precise way. But what I do know is that underlying the idea of appropriation is the sense that something — or someone — is just there for the taking: A style of dress, a personal narrative, an entire continent. You can’t always prove appropriation. But you usually know it when you see it."

"Indigenous peoples have the right to maintain, control, protect and develop their cultural heritage, traditional knowledge and traditional cultural expressions, as well as the manifestations of their sciences, technologies and cultures, including human and genetic resources, seeds, medicines, knowledge of the properties of fauna and flora, oral traditions, literatures, designs, sports and traditional games and visual and performing arts. They also have the right to maintain, control, protect and develop their intellectual property over such cultural heritage, traditional knowledge, and traditional cultural expressions."

"…the truths of Christianity are constant, unchanging, and meant for all people, times, and places. But the methods by which truth is articulated and practiced must be culturally appropriated, and therefore constantly translated …if doctrine is constant and practice is constantly changing, the result is living orthodoxy."

"The “exchange” in cultural exchange suggests you give something in return for having taken something. If it’s culture that’s taken, then presumably what’s given back is the art. In which case the difference between appropriation and exchange, to be (maybe absurdly) logical about it, would have to lie with an assessment of the value of the art itself. Of course we can’t really quantify the value of what is taken or the value of the art, but that would be the logic. The more you take, the more you have to give back — the better the work has to be. Maybe when we say it’s wrong to take something, we really mean, What you’ve given back is far too poor, too mediocre — it’s bad art. I’ve never heard anyone accuse the hip-hop group Wu-Tang Clan of appropriating Chinese culture. This may be because I haven’t talked to enough people. But maybe it is because the music that came from a group of hip-hop kids from Staten Island who watched a lot of kung fu movies in trips to Times Square was that good."

"The [western] intellectual property rights system and the (mis)appropriation of Indigenous knowledge without the prior knowledge and consent of Indigenous peoples evoke feelings of anger, or being cheated."

"To be entirely against taking anything from another culture would be to condemn everything to memoir — and of all the genres of literature, I think memoir deserves the reputation for being the least true. It’s awkward to recognize that “Madame Bovary” couldn’t be better written by a French housewife. Flaubert himself identified with Emma just enough. RZA (who with his friends referred to Staten Island as “Shaolin”) saw himself, just enough, in tales of underground kung fu rebellion leaders. But most of us instinctively have more faith in what someone outside the center of power has to say; what of this instinct is legitimate, and what of it is too blunt? We remember that it was a gay, bourgeois Jew who best portrayed the French aristocracy, and not the reverse. Even though we also know that Tolstoy, from his family estate, could write any character, from peasants to princes. In the case of Wu-Tang Clan, the distribution of power between the culture they came from and the culture they borrowed from is usefully unclear."

"But what is cultural appropriation and exchange? Would it have made a difference if the traveler’s kaffiyeh had been manufactured and purchased in, say, Kuwait City, instead of an Urban Outfitters store in Toronto? Determining such a distinction is also, as with so many things, dependent on intent. Appropriations are expressions of ignorance or aggression, when objects, ideas, lived experiences or points of view are not so much examined as exploited and performed. Exchanges, conversely, suggest a certain sort of generosity, an openness to discussion and an invitation to reciprocity."

"'Dressing up as "another culture", is racist, and an act of privilege. Not only does it lead to offensive, inaccurate, and stereotypical portrayals of other people's culture ... but is also an act of appropriation in which someone who does not experience that oppression is able to "play", temporarily, an "exotic" other, without experience any of the daily discriminations faced by other cultures.'"

"A message is given to many, but those who are meant to understand, understand."

"The message of radio is one of violent, unified implosion and resonance."

"Be my witness, O God, that I conveyed your message to your people."

"Man is a messenger who forgot the message."

"Out of the world comes a behest to instill into the air a rapturous song for God, to incarnate in the stones a message of humble beauty."

"The medium is the message."

"My life is my message."

"The user of the electric light -- or a hammer, or a language, or a book -- is the content. As such, there is a total metamorphosis of the user by the interface. It is the metamorphosis that I consider the message."

"His speech was substantial, and its contents extensive. The messenger, whose mouth was heavy, was not able to repeat it. Because the messenger, whose mouth was tired, was not able to repeat it, the lord of Kulaba patted some clay and wrote the message as if on a tablet. Formerly, the writing of messages on clay was not established. Now, under that sun and on that day, it was indeed so. The lord of Kulaba inscribed the message like a tablet. It was just like that."

"My songs has been my messages that I tried to scatter across the back sides and along the steps of the fire escapes and on the window sills and through the dark halls."

"The "message" of any medium or technology is the change of scale or pace or pattern that it introduces into human affairs"

"The messenger gave heed to the words of his king. He journeyed by the starry night, and by day he travelled with Utu of heaven. Where and to whom will he carry the important message of Inana with its stinging tone? ... He stepped joyfully into the courtyard of Aratta, he made known the authority of his king. Openly he spoke out the words in his heart. The messenger transmitted the message to the lord of Aratta."

"Like sands through the hourglass, so are the Days of Our Lives."

"While it is well enough to leave footprints on the sands of time, it is even more important to make sure they point in a commendable direction."