David Crystal Quotes

Joke exchanges are carried on in deadly earnest, like a verbal duel-mouth-to-mouth combat. Bang, bang: you’re (linguistically) dead.

David Crystal

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Quotes to Explore

• For the first time I go to La Scala, for each thing, for each rehearsal, my knees were shaking. But the audience was very fine with me.

  

  Ildar Abdrazakov
  • Time
  • Me
  • First

• We need to give the Iraqis a chance to build their own future. It should be in their hands. It must be in their hands. That is what democracy is all about. We can teach it, we can explain it, but they must want it enough to make it work for them.

  

  Barbara Boxer
  • Work
  • Future
  • Democracy

• The longer we listen to one another - with real attention - the more commonality we will find in all our lives. That is, if we are careful to exchange with one another life stories and not simply opinions.

  

  Barbara Deming
  • Life
  • Real
  • Attention

• It is impossible to speak in such a way that you cannot be misunderstood.

  

  Karl Popper
  • You
  • Speak
  • Impossible

• The easier it looks on screen, the more hard work goes into making it so.

  

  Nawazuddin Siddiqui
  • Work
  • Looks
  • Hard Work

• In politics, everybody is free to choose his friends and allies.

  

  Lalu Prasad Yadav
  • Friends
  • Free
  • Politics

• I never have time to have a dinner. I have to eat while I'm memorizing lines. The only way to maintain energy is to eat all day long. I must eat all day long.

  

  Zooey Deschanel
  • Time
  • Long
  • Energy

• I guess something people wouldn't expect me to listen to are artists like Alicia Keys. But she is so incredibly talented. She has this huge voice and great work ethic, which I really respect in an artist. She is also very humble and gracious and devoted to her skill.

  

  Zola Jesus
  • Voice
  • Humble
  • Artists

• I think sexuality is fluid, and we have such a strange relationship to it in this country. It's been so fixed and so controlled for so long.

  

  Gaby Hoffmann
  • Long
  • Country
  • Think

• It was a very big principle in my upbringing that you should respect everybody's work. The street sweeper. Everybody. You should never look down on anybody for their work.

  

  Barbara Ehrenreich
  • Work
  • Respect
  • Look

• Leading the SMU men's basketball program is an honor and a responsibility that I take very seriously.

  

  Larry Brown
  • Men
  • Responsibility
  • Honor

• God gave the sea the danger and the abyss, but it was in it that He mirrored the sky.

  

  Fernando Pessoa
  • God
  • Sea
  • Sky

• when the bank calls: 'Chase Bank, I'm self-employed, how long do you want to stay on the phone?'

  

  Maria Bamford
  • Long

• I loved it. We would rehearse in this dark theatre, unaware of the sunny day outside, and be immersed in the magic of creating something from our imaginations.

  

  Elaine Paige
  • Dark
  • Magic
  • Theatre

• To me personally, the only function of philosophy is to teach us to take life more lightly and gayly than the average businessman does, for no businessman who does not retire at fifty, if he can, is in my eyes a philosopher.

  

  Lin Yutang
  • Life
  • Eyes

• Khatami is a symptom and not the cause of change in Iran.

  

  Azar Nafisi

• We are inclined to overemphasize the material influences in history. The Russians especially make this mistake. Intellectual values and ethnic influences, tradition and emotional factors are equally important. If this were not the case, Europe would today be a federated state, not a madhouse of nationalism.

  

  Albert Einstein
  • Values
  • Europe
  • Nationalism

• Challenging schools to treat their students as customers with a choice, instead of inmates serving time.

  

  David Warlick
  • Choices
  • Challenges
  • Students

• I mean, what is music anyway? It's a form of communication - at least for me it is. And that's why I play the kind of music that I think - that I hope - can communicate with people.

  

  Kenneth Bruce Gorelick
  • People
  • Music
  • Why

• I sing the best when I'm really in my voice. It's kind of like I'm meditating but I sort of imagine my voice as a physical thing. I see colours, I feel it moving out of me and I try to tap into images that I was tapping into when I was writing the song.

  

  Brett Dennen
  • Song
  • Imagine
  • Meditating

• I've got a big closet of scripts, and a big stack of scripts on the side of my desk, because you get a whole bunch. Nothing's going to be perfect, and I realize that; but I am a perfectionist, so you go through a lot of stuff.

  

  Chris Tucker
  • Perfect

• If I see a movie star in the department store buying something, I'll kind of sidle up and see what they're saying, what they look like, how they sound. That's an invasion of privacy.

  

  Tom Lehrer
  • Kind
  • Looks
  • Sound

• Joke exchanges are carried on in deadly earnest, like a verbal duel-mouth-to-mouth combat. Bang, bang: you’re (linguistically) dead.

  

  David Crystal