Euphemism Quotes - Page 4

• You are a manipulator. I like to think of myself more as an outcome engineer.

  J.R. Ward

  Thinking, Outcomes, Comedy

  J.R. Ward (2011). “J.R. Ward The Black Dagger Brotherhood Novels 1-4”, p.938, Penguin

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• Although the term dialogue was really a euphemism for scientists trying to kill each other, this format worked very well.

  Joao Magueijo

  Trying, Scientist, Term

  João Magueijo (2004). “Faster Than the Speed of Light: The Story of a Scientific Speculation”, Penguin Group USA

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• Euphemism in the workplace does not end with job descriptions. It reaches a pusillanimous peak at the other end of the work process - in dismissal.

  Nigel Rees

  Jobs, Doe, Workplace

  "In other words ..." by Nigel Rees, www.theguardian.com. October 14, 2006.

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• The lyric abstrusities of Auden ring mystically down the circular canals of my ear and it begins to look like snow. The good gray conservative obliterating snow. Smoothing (in one white lacy euphemism after another) out all the black bleak angular unangelic nauseous ugliness of the blasted sterile world: dry buds, shrunken stone houses, dead vertical moving people all all all go under the great white beguiling wave. And come out transformed. Lose yourself in a numb dumb snow-daubed lattice of crystal and come out pure with the white virginal veneer you never had.

  Sylvia Plath

  Moving, Weather, White

  Sylvia Plath (2013). “The Journals of Sylvia Plath”, p.73, Anchor

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• I'm with an old family" was the euphemism used to dignify the professions of white folks' cooks and maids who talked so affectedly among their own kind in Roxbury [Massachusetts] that you couldn't even understand them.

  Malcolm X

  White, Massachusetts, Maids

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• In our time, political speech and writing are largely the defense of the indefensible. Things like the continuance of British rule in India, the Russian purges and deportations, the dropping of the atom bombs on Japan, can indeed be defended, but only by arguments which are too brutal for most people to face, and which do not square with the professed aims of the political parties. Thus political language has to consist largely of euphemism, question-begging and sheer cloudy vagueness.

  George Orwell

  Party, Writing, Squares

  George Orwell (2001). “Orwell and Politics”, p.459, Penguin UK

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• Planned Parenthood's entire existence is basically based on keeping people in the dark through euphemism. You don't call it genocide, you call it reproductive health. So that's why Planned Parenthood has - nobody really thought.

  Greg Gutfeld

  Dark, People, Parenthood

  Source: www.foxnews.com

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• I'm waxed clean - hairless as the day as I was born. But don't say 'Tia has no pubic hair.' That's so clinical. Use a nice euphemism. Say 'She's mowed her secret garden' or 'She's cleared the way to the Promised Land.' Because that's what it is, right?

  Tia Carrere

  Nice, Garden, Hair

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• I've never been a fan of euphemism.

  Jo Brand

  Fans

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• In South America euphemism appears to be the grisly preserve of violent power. 'Liberty' was the name of the biggest prison in Uruguay under the military dictatorship, while in Chile one of the concentration camps was called 'Dignity.' It was the self-styled 'Peace and Justice' paramilitary group in Chiapas [Mexico] that in 1997 shot 45 peasants in the back, nearly all of them women and children, as they prayed in a church. What have the souls of the south done over the past few decades to deserve quite so much liberty and dignity and peace and justice?

  Isabel Fonseca

  Children, Military, Past

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• Once one understands that 'racial tensions' is a euphemism for a black animosity toward whites and a left-wing construct, one begins to understand why the election of a black president has had no impact on most blacks or on the left.

  Dennis Prager

  Wings, Impact, Black

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• "Striking looking." That's a euphemism if I ever heard one.

  Ron Perlman

  Heard, Ifs

  Source: www.avclub.com

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• The Japanese tend to communicate via nuance and euphemism, often leaving important things unsaid; whereas Americans tend to think they're being subtle when they refrain from grabbing the listener by the shirt.

  Dave Barry

  Funny, Humorous, Thinking

  Dave Barry (2010). “Dave Barry Does Japan”, p.35, Ballantine Books

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• Controversial' as we all know, is often a euphemism for 'interesting and intelligent.

  Kevin Smith

  Writing, Intelligent, Interesting

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• Asymmetrical warfare is a euphemism for terrorism, just like collateral damage is a euphemism for killing innocent civilians.

  Alan Dershowitz

  Damage, Warfare, Terrorism

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• There's a grosser irony about Politically Correct English. This is that PCE purports to be the dialect of progressive reform but is in fact - in its Orwellian substitution of the euphemisms of social equality for social equality itself - of vastly more help to conservatives and the US status quo than traditional SNOOT prescriptions ever were.

  David Foster Wallace

  Reform, Dialect, Facts

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