John McWhorter Quotes
As a linguist, I see the arbitrariness of strictures editors force on me as a writer.
Quotes to Explore
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Elvis was a big influence to my music, but Loretta Lynn was, as well.
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We know the threats - from global terrorist networks to the spread of deadly weapons. Yet we also know that embedded in this time of danger is the promise of a new day, if we have the courage and commitment to work together.
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Snowden grants that NSA employees by and large believe in their mission and trust the agency to handle the secrets it takes from ordinary people - deliberately, in the case of bulk records collection, and 'incidentally,' when the content of American phone calls and e-mails are swept into NSA systems along with foreign targets.
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My grandma would say if someone else calls you a hillbilly, you might need to punch them in the nose. But if we call ourselves hillbillies, it's a sort of a term of endearment, something that we have co-opted.
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The central premise behind Oslo was that if Arafat were given enough legitimacy, territory, weapons and money, he would use his power to fight terror and make peace with Israel.
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Growing up, I thought I was going to be Madonna. I wanted to be a pop star. I wanted to dance and sing.
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There can be a lot of mind games going on between the players. When you're about to serve, people will try to throw you off your rhythm by taking a walk. If you're tired, you can't show that at all to an opponent.
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So an autobiography about death should include, in my case, an account of European Jewry and of Russian and Jewish events - pogroms and flights and murders and the revolution that drove my mother to come here.
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Even Jimmy Carter can't be wrong all the time.
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The surest method of being incomprehensible or, moreover, to be misunderstood is to use words in their original sense; especially words from the ancient languages.
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Anything I wanted to do and achieve has not been influential in my life, but my failures have.
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Weapons of mass destruction violate more than individual lives - they cross international borders and jeopardize all people. They also drain resources that could be used instead for medicines, schools and other life-saving supplies. We must come together with even greater determination to prevent a WMD nightmare.
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Men, like nails, lose their usefulness when they lose their direction and begin to bend.
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The Arab Spring showed that people are not going to wait for an American president to make good on his big talk about democracy and human rights; they are going to fight for those rights themselves and overthrow pro-American dictators who stand in their way.
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I'm a big fan of David Attenborough, who I think is the most adventurous of the nature program presenters.
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My mouth ain't no prayer book.
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What rights are those that dare not resist for them?
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I opened Union Square Cafe when I was just 27 years old, and my first hope was simply that it would stay in business. My higher hope was that in its lifetime, it might grow to play an essential role in the lives of its stakeholders.
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To iterate is human, to recurse divine.
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My friends think it's weird that I spray perfume on my feet.
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People don't realize that I'm really funny and I'm an excellent bridge player.
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If you go and talk to most people, they mean well but they don't have much of a breadth on education, of knowledge of understanding what the real issues are and therefore they listen to pundits on television who tell them what they are supposed to think and they keep repeating that until pretty soon they say, 'Oh, well that must be true.'
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As a linguist, I see the arbitrariness of strictures editors force on me as a writer.
