Arika Okrent Quotes
The job of the linguist, like that of the biologist or the botanist, is not to tell us how nature should behave, or what its creations should look like, but to describe those creations in all their messy glory and try to figure out what they can teach us about life, the world, and, especially in the case of linguistics, the workings of the human mind.

Quotes to Explore
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The Koran was revealed at a time of great change in the Arab world, the seventh-century shift from a matriarchal nomadic culture to an urban patriarchal system.
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Antonio Berardi is one of my good friends.
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I never had crushes on anybody when I was younger; I really didn't.
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Afghanistan has moved forward and Afghanistan will defend itself. And the progress that we have achieved, the Afghan people will not allow it to be put back or reversed.
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But I think boys ultimately are easier than girls.
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I tend to like simple music. And clever, succinct lyrics. Songs that don't try to be more than they need to to be effective, to stir up something emotionally within you.
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Religion has caused more harm than any other idea since the beginning of time. There's nothing good I can say about it. People use it as a crutch.
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Equality, rightly understood as our founding fathers understood it, leads to liberty and to the emancipation of creative differences; wrongly understood, as it has been so tragically in our time, it leads first to conformity and then to despotism.
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I graduated from the University of Oklahoma, and I got the opportunity to take some on-camera classes while I was in school and met a casting director who informed me quite a bit before my move out to L.A.; it made L.A. feel possible, coming from Oklahoma and not having a family that was in the industry.
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I'm proud of my sexuality.
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You can't reconcile being pro-life on abortion and pro-death on the death penalty.
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I wrote a lot of 'Red Queen' wrapped in a blanket, cramped up while watching the snow come down.
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American literature has always been immigrant.
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For months, Obama administration officials attacked Snowden's motives and said the work of the NSA was distorted by selective leaks and misinterpretations.
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The 1980s will seem like a walk in the park when compared to new global challenges, where annual productivity increases of 6% may not be enough. A combination of software, brains, and running harder will be needed to bring that percentage up to 8% or 9%.
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But I won't work with the exact same crew film after film because I feel the work would get a little complacent.
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But no nation can base its survival and development on luck and prayers alone while its leadership fritters away every available opportunity for success and concrete achievement.
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KRS One and LL Cool J are the biggest influences in my rap career, along with Heavy D.
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But if you really want to get involved in making a difference, you can stay at home with your family and have a job and make a reasonable living without having to be on an airplane all of the time, then you ought to go back home and run for School Board.
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However, intention needn't enter in, and if a reader sees things in a religious way, and the work is dogmatically acceptable, then I don't see why it should not be interpreted in that way, as well as in others.
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The organization I founded in 1993, Camfed (the Campaign for Female Education), was in large part inspired by the generosity shown to me by a community in a village in Zimbabwe. During my visit to Mola to research girls' exclusion from education, the people of Mola fed me, shaded me, walked and talked with me for hours each day.
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I think lower wages have made men much less marriageable than they were before. It's not just like your job goes to hell. Your marriage goes to hell. You don't know your children anymore. Your children have a higher chance of being screwed up.
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I was so invested in ballet, and it was my entire life. And then it was realizing that I didn't want it to be my entire life forever. And then it was this very specific life, and I wanted to learn about other things. So I modeled to fill the time because dancing was very much a job, even when I was 14 years old.
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The job of the linguist, like that of the biologist or the botanist, is not to tell us how nature should behave, or what its creations should look like, but to describe those creations in all their messy glory and try to figure out what they can teach us about life, the world, and, especially in the case of linguistics, the workings of the human mind.