7 Quotes by Aldous Huxley about language
- Author Aldous Huxley
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What a gulf between impression and expression! That’s our ironic fate—to have Shakespearean feelings and (unless by some billion-to-one chance we happen to be Shakespeare) to talk about them like automobile salesmen or teen-agers or college professors. We practice alchemy in reverse—touch gold and it turns into lead; touch the pure lyrics of experience, and they turn into the verbal equivalents of tripe and hogwash.
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- Author Aldous Huxley
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We float in language like icebergs – four-fifths under the surface and only one-fifth of us projecting into the open air of immediate, non-linguistic experience.
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- Author Aldous Huxley
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Thanks to words, we have been able to rise above the brutes; and thanks to words, we have often sunk to the level of the demons.
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- Author Aldous Huxley
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In a world where education is predominantly verbal, highly educated people find it all but impossible to pay serious attention to anything but words and notions.
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- Author Aldous Huxley
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Every individual is at once the beneficiary and the victim of the linguistic tradition into which he has been born.
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- Author Aldous Huxley
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For in spite of language, in spite of intelligence and intuition and sympathy, one can never really communicate anything to anybody.
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- Author Aldous Huxley
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In the contexts of religion and politics, words are not regarded as standing, rather inadequately, for things and events; on the contrary, things and events are regarded as particular illustrations of words.
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