David Crystal Quotes

There's an old little jingle: 'The chief use of slang is to show that you're one of the gang.' What that means is that every social group has its own linguistic bonding mechanism. If there's a group of lawyers, they have their own slang. If there's a group of doctors, they have their own slang, and so on.

David Crystal

• Gang

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Quotes to Explore

• A pregnant woman facing the most dire circumstances must be able to count on her doctor to do what is medically necessary to protect her from serious physical harm.

  

  Barbara Mikulski
  • Woman
  • Serious
  • Medical

• 'SNL' is the first real job I've held for more than a month and a half.

  

  Hannibal Buress
  • Real
  • Job
  • Month

• 'Girls' feels very active and stirring a conversation and controversial, and you can't really ask for more as an actor.

  

  Adam Driver
  • You
  • Actor
  • Conversation

• It's fun to take two topics and mix them into one cartoon.

  

  Walt Handelsman
  • Fun
  • Two
  • Cartoon

• We all live with blinders on. They come with having a personal vantage point.

  

  Victoria Moran
  • Live
  • Point
  • Personal

• I grew up listening in awe to stories of their wartime adventures. My granny, Joan, was a journalist and wrote amazing letters to my grandpa when he was a prisoner of war, while my nana, Mary, was a Land Girl, then a Wren. They were so independent, resilient and glamorous.

  

  Laura Carmichael
  • Up
  • War
  • Girl

• Apparently, Mayella's recital had given her confidence, but it was not her father's brash kind: there was something stealthy about hers, like a steady-eyed cat with a twitchy tail.

  

  Harper Lee
  • Father
  • Confidence
  • Cat

• The windows of my soul are made of one way glassDon't bother looking into my eyesIf there's something you want to know - just ask.

  

  Ani DiFranco
  • Soul

• I try and keep an ear out and keep an open mind and enjoy something where I don't know what the hell is going on inside of it. That's what I really get out of it. Because to me it's new. That's what I get out of it. That joyful feeling of you don't know what's going to happen next.

  

  Joe Strummer The Clash
  • Mind
  • Feeling

• I didn’t want to be the kind of man that my father was. So I’ve tried, my entire life, to be the complete and utter opposite of that. And it has served not only the art well, but I think the audience well.

  

  Tyler Perry
  • Life
  • Art
  • Father

• The key to understanding Crowley is the same as the key to understanding the Marquis de Sade. Both wasted an immense amount of energy screaming defiance at the authority they resented so much, and lacked the insight to see that they were shaking their fists as at abstraction.

  

  Colin Wilson
  • Energy
  • Understanding

• It isn't enough to talk about peace. One must believe in it. And it isn't enough to believe in it. One must work at it.

  

  Eleanor Roosevelt
  • Work
  • Believe
  • Peace

• Are these signs of hope, or do we deceive ourselves by wishing them to be?

  

  Lloyd Alexander
  • Hope

• When people blanket a whole class of people with statements, I just think that is unfair to everybody. I could do the same thing about media. I can do the same thing about politicians or lawyers, and they're just never accurate.

  

  Jamie Dimon
  • People

• I wrote about a bird that cleaned a crocodile's teeth. The story was so good that my teacher could not believe that a ten-year-old could write that well. I was even punished because my teacher thought I'd lied about writing it! I had always loved to write, but it was then that I realized that I had a talent for it.

  

  Brian Jacques
  • Good
  • Believe
  • Writing

• I was in California when this journalist made a blanket statement about the fact that she did not think that black men and women had the kind of love relationship that Rebecca and Nathan had in Sounder.

  

  Cicely Tyson
  • Men
  • Women
  • She

• All the dark, malevolent Passions of the Soul are roused and exerted; its mild and amiable affections are suppressed; and with them, virtuous Principles are laid prostrate.

  

  Charles Inglis
  • Soul
  • Dark

• There are places that I've always wanted to go. First I went to Africa, and when I was there I realized there were places in Africa I really to wanted to visit: The Congo, West Africa, Mombassa. I wanted to see the deep, dark, outlandish places.

  

  Paul Theroux
  • Dark
  • Deep

• General ideas are no proof of the strength, but rather of the insufficiency of the human intellect.

  

  Alexis de Tocqueville

• Let me ask you outright, gentle reader, if there have not been hours, indeed whole days and weeks of your life, during which all your usual activities were painfully repugnant, and everything you believed in and valued seemed foolish and worthless?

  

  E. T. A. Hoffmann
  • Life
  • Week
  • Hours

• Whatever looks ahead of grievous abominations and disorder, you and me walk into it together like always.

  

  Alan Sepinwall
  • Together
  • Looks
  • Walk

• I had two sisters carried away in a chain-gang - one of them left two children. We were always uneasy.

  

  Harriet Tubman
  • Children
  • Always
  • Two

• There's an old little jingle: 'The chief use of slang is to show that you're one of the gang.' What that means is that every social group has its own linguistic bonding mechanism. If there's a group of lawyers, they have their own slang. If there's a group of doctors, they have their own slang, and so on.

  

  David Crystal
  • Gang