Jargon Quotes - Page 5

• Well, Page, I do wish the Devil had old Cooke, for I am sure I never was so tired of an old dull scoundrel in my life ... But the old-fellows say we must read to gain knowledge; and gain knowledge to make us happy and be admired. Mere jargon! Is there any such thing as happiness in this world? No.

  Thomas Jefferson

  Educational, Tired, Wish

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• Literary theory has become a parody of science, generating its own arcane jargon. In the process, tragically, it discourages love of literature for its own sake.

  Nancy Pearcey

  Literary Theory, Literature, Sake

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• Sphere Music - Some sounds seem to reverberate along the plain, and then settle to earth again like dust; such are Noise, Discord, Jargon. But such only as spring heavenward, and I may catch from steeples and hilltops in their upward course, which are the more refined parts of the former, are the true sphere music - pure, unmixed music - in which no wail mingles.

  Henry David Thoreau

  Spring, Dust, Sound

  Henry David Thoreau, Odell Shepard (1961). “The Heart of Thoreau's Journals”, p.6, Courier Corporation

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• A jargon form'd from the lost language, wit, Confounded in that Babel of the pit; Form'd by diseased conceptions, weak and wild, Sick lust of souls, and an abortive child; Born between whores and fops, by lewd compacts, Before the play, or else between the acts; Nor wonder, if from such polluted minds Should spring such short and transitory kinds.

  Jonathan Swift

  Children, Spring, Play

  Jonathan Swift (1801). “The Works of of the Rev. Jonathan Swift”, p.411

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• Where jargon turns living issues into abstractions, and where jargon ends by competing with jargon, people don't have causes. They only have enemies.

  V. S. Naipaul

  Issues, People, Enemy

  V. S. Naipaul (2012). “Literary Occasions: Essays”, p.201, Pan Macmillan

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• All this [Paul's writing] is nothing better than the jargon of a conjurer who picks up phrases he does not understand to confound the credulous people who come to have their fortune told. Age of Reason

  Thomas Paine

  Writing, Thinking, People

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• I don't get into 'becauses.' When you come into a studio you see a number of works. My habit is to go to the one I like most. If you start to say, 'because,' you get into art jargon.

  Clement Greenberg

  Art, Numbers, Habit

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• What's a' your jargon o' your schools, Your Latin names for horns and stools; If honest nature made you fools.

  Robert Burns

  Latin, Teaching, School

  Robert Burns, James Currie (1835). “The Works of Robert Burns: With an Account of His Life, and a Criticism on His Writings”, p.132

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• The world of the 90s and beyond will belong to managers or those who make the numbers dance, as we used to say, or those who are conversant with all the business jargon we used to sound smart. The world will belong to passionate, driven leaders -- people who not only have an enormous amount of energy but who can energize those whom they lead.

  John Welch

  Leadership, Smart, Numbers

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• We have been stuffed full of praise for mediocrity and had our foibles diagnosed away with hyphenated jargon and pop psychology.

  Kevin DeYoung

  Psychology, Mediocrity, Praise

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• The jargon of authenticity ... is a trademark of societalized chosenness, ... sub-language as superior language.

  Theodor Adorno

  Language, Authenticity, Trademarks

  "The Jargon of Authenticity". Book by Theodor W. Adorno, 1964.

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• The clear and simple words of common usage are always better than those of erudition. The jargon of the philosophers not seldom conceals an absence of thought.

  Andre Maurois

  Simple, Philosopher, Common

  "The Art of Writing". Book by Andre Maurois, 1960.

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• This is revolution in reaction, as well as in radicalism, and Toryism speaking a jargon of law and order may often be a graver menace to liberty than radicalism bellowing the empty phrases of the soapbox demagogue.

  Frank I. Cobb

  Often Is, Order, Law

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• In every country and every age, the priest has been hostile to liberty. He is always in alliance with the despot, abetting his abuses in return for protection to his own. It is easier to acquire wealth and power by this combination than by deserving them, and to effect this, they have perverted the purest religion ever preached to man into mystery and jargon, unintelligible to all mankind, and therefore the safer for their purposes.

  Thomas Jefferson

  Country, Men, Abuse

  Thomas Jefferson (2004). “Light and Liberty: Reflections on the Pursuit of Happiness”, p.74, Modern Library

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• The attempt of Lavoisier to reform chemical nomenclature is premature. One single experiment may destroy the whole filiation of his terms; and his string of sulphates, sulphites, and sulphures, may have served no end than to have retarded the progress of science by a jargon, from the confusion of which time will be requisite to extricate us.

  Thomas Jefferson

  Science, Confusion, Confusing

  Thomas Jefferson, H. A. Washington (2011). “The Writings of Thomas Jefferson: Being His Autobiography, Correspondence, Reports, Messages, Addresses, and Other Writings, Official and Private”, p.432, Cambridge University Press

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• Hume develops his arguments by a series of models. He doesn't call them models in the pretentious way in which we envelope, very often, pure banalities in this jargon

  Lionel Robbins, Baron Robbins

  Envelopes, Way, Argument

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• Jargon marks the place where thinking has been. It becomes a kind of macro, to use a computer term: a way of storing a complicated sequence of thinking operations under a unique name.

  Marjorie Garber

  Unique, Thinking, Names

  Marjorie Garber (2009). “Academic Instincts”, p.144, Princeton University Press

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• New York cops are very specific in terms of the way they talk and the way they handle themselves. All these cliches that, as an Englishman, I thought were from a bygone era or were a bit of poetic license with cop shows - the more you hang out with them, the more you realize how real that jargon is.

  Theo James

  New York, Real, Poetic License

  "From Turkish Corpse to New York Cop" by Jeremy Egner, www.nytimes.com. February 15, 2013.

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• Creationists have also changed their name ... to intelligent design theorists who study 'irreducible complexity' and the 'abrupt appearance' of life-yet more jargon for 'God did it.' ... Notice that they have no interest in replacing evolution with native American creation myths or including the Code of Hammarabi alongside the posting of the Ten Commandments in public schools.

  Michael Shermer

  Native American, School, Science

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• It is curious how an age of public self-revelation, and of the use of psychological jargon, should also be an age when self-examination is rarely practised.

  Anthony Daniels

  Self, Age, Use

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• We do not need French post-structuralism, whose pedantic jargon, clumsy convolutions, and prissy abstractions have spread throughout academe and the arts and are now blighting the most promising minds of the next generation. This is a major crisis if there ever was one, and every sensible person must help bring it to an end.

  Camille Paglia

  Art, Mind, Needs

  Camille Paglia (2011). “Sex, Art, and American Culture: Essays”, p.8, Vintage

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• A man who says that men are machines may be a great scientist. A man who says he is a machine is 'depersonalized' in psychiatric jargon.

  R. D. Laing

  Men, Machines, Body

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