For every kind of beasts, and of birds, and of serpents, and of things in the sea, is tamed, and hath been tamed of mankind: but the tongue can no man tame; it is an unruly evil, full of deadly poison. Therewith bless we God, even the Father; and therewith curse we men, which are made after the similitude of God.
And the Gileadites took the passages of Jordan before the Ephraimites: and it was so, that when those Ephraimites which were escaped said, Let me go over; that the men of Gilead said unto him, Art thou an Ephraimite? If he said, Nay. Then said they unto him, Say now Shibboleth: and he said Sibboleth: for he could not frame to pronounce it right. Then they took him, and slew him at the passages of Jordan: and there fell at that time of the Ephraimites forty and two thousand.
— Each time a word becomes prohibited, you remove a stone from the democratic foundation.
Society demonstrates its impotence in the face of a concrete problem by removing words from the language.
— I think society would claim that... That politically correctness is a very precise expression of democratic concern for minorities.
— And I say that society is as cowardly as the people in it, who in my opinion are also too stupid for democracy.
Words should be employed as the means, not as the end: language is the instrument, conviction is the work.
Political language — and with variations this is true of all political parties, from Conservatives to Anarchists — is designed to make lies sound truthful and murder respectable, and to give an appearance of solidity to pure wind.
An ox taken by the horns, and a man by the tongue.
I'm the Baba in Arabic!
You're the Baba in Russia!
— Don't you ever get tired of reading that book?
— No.
— Well, what's in it, anyway?
— Things.
— Oh, for Christ's sake!
— It is called Talmon. It contains the words of our great teacher, Shismar.
— I suppose you have to know the Drac language to read it, right?
— It would help.
— So teach me the Drac language.
— It is not for you, Davidge.
— Shismar is too good for us humans, is that it?
— Not too good for humans, but too good for you.
— Now you're a judge of character.
— Do you not remember what you say about Shismar?
— Well, maybe you forgot what you said about Mickey Mouse!
— That was wrong. I did not mean it.
— I didn't mean what I said about Shismar, either.
— Most of them don't speak English.
— They speak English well enough. Gaelic-speaking region. Did they not teach you that at Langley?
— No, they did not teach me that at Langley. For the simple fact that Langley is the CIA, you idiot, not the FBI.
— You didn't know people in west Ireland speak Gaelic and I'm the idiot?
Well, he plays things close to the vest now. And a hard-learned lesson it was. Three days out on the venture, the first mate comes to him and says everything's an equal share, that should mean the location of the treasure too. So Jack gives up the bearings. That night there was a mutiny. They marooned Jack on an island and left him to die. But not before he'd gone mad with the heat.
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