Columnists

"One Australian tradition is to cut down the elite and the successful. It had its roots in the era of convicts who naturally opposed those in authority. This levelling or egalitarian tradition continued to flourish on the goldfields in the 1850s when the unusual mining laws gave everyone an opportunity to find gold, and the tradition was accentuated around 1900 by the rising trade unions. The attitude was one of the spurs to Australian democracy."

"A few important Muslim leaders regretted that Australian society, as they experienced it, defied their beliefs and preachings. In their eyes it was decadent and irreligious. And yet one century earlier, a host of Australian churchgoers would have agreed with the mainstream Muslim suspicion of alcohol, drugs, pornography, party-going, scantily clad women, blasphemous language, suicide, homosexuality and the Sabbath. It was the Christians who, in the following four generations, relaxed their views on these social questions. They became more tolerant at a time when sections of Islam were becoming less tolerant."

"A world without problems is an illusion, so is a world without solutions."

"Open your eyes wide and immerse yourself in your dreams without any hesitation!"

"Your eyes see what your brain expects to see..."

"We long for a technological world, while keeping the natural aspect of our environment; we want the progress, while maintaining the traditions; we want organization while preserving individual freedom; we produce at a large scale while looking for unique products; we want clearness in our relationships, while we like to play with the ambiguity; we wish everlasting happiness while seeking incomparable magic moments… In reality, from all these contradictions, we are looking for only one thing: ASTONISHMENT. We would life to astonish us every day! That’s why we all, human beings, love playing, because games are synonymous of risk and astonishment. Games are enactments, and the act of playing is an illusion of the illusion of the reality."

"Colors are ghosts, they only start to exist when light is perceived on the retina as a stimulus and is processed into color perception in our brain."

"Your eyes – those incredible jelly balls beneath your forehead – capture everything around you. They are sense organs allowing you to see, and they give more information about your surroundings than any of the other four senses: hearing, taste, touch and smell."

"Are the eyes an open door to the world, as poets say? Well, honestly, not really. The fact is, we see the world through a pair of tiny peepholes, the pupils of our eyes. Our brain functions as a highly creative ‘camera obscura’ – the forerunner of the modern photographic camera, named from the Latin for dark room."

"Life is a space between two illusions: Birth and Death..."

"Life, like art, is purposeless and unpredictable. That’s what makes it beautiful and rare! In life, we are given the choice between three paths: utopia, illusion or nonsense. The funny thing is, none of us get the joke."

"The greatest optical illusion of all is to believe that an image has only one interpretation."

"The German poet Novalis said that the eye is a ‘superficial’ organ. That is indeed partly true. I will even add that it is an external organ: the eye with which we see the world is a part of the world itself. As soon as we open the eye, whup, the world pops in it!"

"AWADies will be familiar with Anu Garg's refreshing approach to words: words are fun and they have fascinating histories."

"A lex icon."

"[T]hat's how a language grows. Old words die - or take on a new life. New words appear. Language wordstock is replenished, refreshed, and the language remains vibrant and serviceable, ready to describe new concepts, ideas, and objects. Many language purists object to this way of growth. But we have to remember that just as yesterday's liberal is often tomorrow's conservative, in many cases, what was considered slang in the past, eventually acquires respectability."

"A right word is the most direct route between two minds."

"The best way to enrich vocabulary is organically, by coming across words in their natural habitat, taking the time to learn about them, their histories, and making lifelong friends with them."

"A large vocabulary is like an artist having a big palette of colors. We don't have to use all the colors in a single painting, but it helps to be able to find just the right shade when we need it."

"Browsing the OED is the idea of a perfect day for me."

"There are exotic species of words jumping out inviting me to play. I weave them into a theme, a garland of words."

"English never met a word it didn't like."

"We're all surrounded by words like air, and we all need them even though they are often invisible, just like air."

"I have a dream where society will replace guns with dictionaries."

"Garg works in the great tradition of Wilfred Funk and Norman Lewis... Garg, however, is more fun."

"Anu Garg triggers the kind of passionate reaction that actors, authors and memoirists would die for."

"Only Anu Garg, the founder of Wordsmith.org, can make word facts this much fun."

"thumb|People travel. Words travel. People settle in new lands and so do words. Did I hear someone say they wanted to make walls, close off people from one another? Here’s to more travel, more mixing, more migration, more import and export, and more sweetness in our lives!People travel. Words travel. People settle in new lands and so do words. Did I hear someone say they wanted to make walls, close off people from one another? Here’s to more travel, more mixing, more migration, more import and export, and more sweetness in our lives!"

"Eyes are verbs that conjugate the emotions."

"Scientifically speaking, an overweight person is more attractive than a skinny one. Newton's Law of Gravitation."

"Q: What language is not written in French? A: Sanskrit. In French, it's known as sanskrit or sanscrit, which you can interpret as sans (without) + écrit (written) https://www.facebook.com/wordsmithorg/posts/10157813707206840"

"The verb "fuck" has been a part of the language since at least early 1500s. The actual practice, far longer. So, no need to be embarrassed of either."

"When life gives you lemons make melons."

"Do the best job I can, not hurt our fellow beings on this planet, that's my religion."

"Like a human being, each word has a story. To understand a word, we need to learn where it was born, what paths it took to reach where it is today and how it has changed along the way."

"If you torture words enough, they'll confess to anything."

"All the life's wisdom can be found in anagrams. Anagrams never lie."

"Overall, the universe's apostrophe store stays in balance. It seems our linguistic world was intelligently designed -- for every gratuitous apostrophe there's an instance where it's omitted."

"If you speak English, you speak at least a part of more than a hundred languages."

"For as long as I can recall, I enjoyed reading. I literally read books from cover to cover. Then I started wondering where words come from. Who made them up? Who said that that opening in a wall was to be called a window? Then I discovered that each word comes with a biography. These words have fascinating stories to tell, if only we take the time to listen. For example, the word window comes from Old Norse in which it meant wind's eye. How much more poetic can you get?"

"A word in the head is worth two in the book."

"John O'Hara was a terrible bore as a young man—always looking for a fight, and making sure he never found one."

"I tended to read whatever was in the house, which meant that I read a lot of odd stuff. Who was that guy that used to write about men's clubs all the time? John O'Hara. It was Mars for me"

"I have work to do, and I am afraid not to do it."

"The provision of basic services to the people is not a privilege. Nor is it a charitable act. The people already paid for the services via the high taxes."

"In other words, the inept and malicious propaganda against me will not work. Money has never won any elections. Cartel propaganda fueled by evil, lies and malice will not emerge victorious against righteousness, integrity and vision. I represent hope and a fully liberated and cleaned up Nairobi while the cartels are determined to protect and fortify the rotten, corrupt and exploitative status quo."

"Nairobians only had crooks as candidate in 2013. Voters did not have leaders of integrity to choose from. In 2017, they will have me."

"Every single leader here, I can take to The Hague. Mark my word. I have it right here! And I am saying, Come, baby come!"

"I’m vying as an independent candidate in Nairobi City County. I’m not vying as a representative of any ethnic group. I’m going to be the Governor of all patriotic Kenyans. I’m going to be the Governor of all tribes, religions, faiths, races and political persuasions."

"The ability to write reflects on one’s capacity to think clearly."