Quotes & Sayings About Double Talk

Like the White Rabbit in Alice, I'm late, I'm late, for a very important date. They're following me, you see, but I needed to double back and talk to you. Busy-busy-busy! — Stephen King

Watch out for people who try to dazzle you with big words and intellectual double-talk. They want to drag you off into endless arguments that never amount to anything. They spread their ideas through the empty traditions of human beings and the empty superstitions of spirit beings. But that's not the way of Christ. Everything of God gets expressed in him, so you can see and hear him clearly. You don't need a telescope, a microscope, or a horoscope to realize the fullness of Christ, and the emptiness of the universe without him. When you come to him, that fullness comes together for you, too. His power extends over everything. 11-15 Entering into this fullness — Eugene H. Peterson

Opening the door, he nearly did a double take into the mirror behind
him.
Hooch. Hooch, pushing his shades back up onto his head, and re-shouldering the bergan. Hooch, standing in the doorway.
"Been thinking."
Two words, more than usual.
"Been around a bit."
Six, speech worthy of a national holiday.
"Looking for a station now."
Eleven, whole fucking fireworks.
"Central station."
Thirteen, and the heavens came down for Matt.
"You still offering?"
Sixteen, and the world stopped spinning.
Matt stood thinking for a while, not a muscle in his face twitched. Then
stepped aside, gestured the other man to follow him. Closed the door.
"One condition."
Hooch's brows rose for a split second.
Matt broke into a grin at last, which threatened to split his face. "Promise
not to talk too much. — Marquesate

In theory, theory and practice are the same. In practice, they are not. — Anonymous

Responding to John the Baptist's hard-line approach, Jesus maintains both sides of this equation when he says, "No man born of woman is greater than John the Baptizer, yet the least who enters the kingdom of heaven is greater than he is" (Matthew 11:11). Is that double-talk? No, it is second-half-of-life talk. — Richard Rohr

We can talk about the value of sportsmanship on one hand, and on the other hand, the leading shots, highlights ... you see every night are the outrageous and unsportsmanlike, so I think there is a double standard here. On the one hand, we complain about it, on the other hand it's the first thing you see every night. — Joe Dumars

Math is "maths," an elevator is a "lift," a truck is a "lorry," a flashlight is a "torch," and "crisps" are what they call potato chips, while "chips" over here means French fries. Just as riding the double-decker buses thrills me, I get a thrill out of hearing people talk. — Heather Vogel Frederick

It's double talk and double standards. It's like, be honest, but don't be too honest. Look fresh-faced and young, but don't tell us how you got there. God forbid you have plastic surgery, even though we're telling you, 'Oh, you look old.' Be a career woman, but also, why aren't you having kids? Are you some kind of cold shrew? — Rachel Bloom

I like to talk on the cell when I do interviews. That way, I double my chances of getting brain cancer: from the cell phone, and from the questions. — Garry Shandling

The contradictions were apparent to Makhaya, and perhaps there was no greater crime as yet than all the lies Western civilization had told in the name of Jesus Christ. It seemed to Makhaya far preferable for Africa if it did without Christianity and Christian double-talk, fat priests, golden images, and looked around at all the thin naked old men who sat under trees weaving baskets with shaking hands. People could do without religions and Gods who died for the sins of the world and thereby left men without any feeling of self-responsibility for the crimes they committed. This seemed to Makhaya the greatest irony of Christianity. It meant that a white man could forever go on slaughtering black men simply because Jesus Christ would save him from his sins. Africa could do without a religion like that. 135 — Bessie Head

No woman in any of my cases has ever left a man the first time he behaved abusively (not that doing so would be wrong). By the time she moves to end her relationship, she has usually lived with years of verbal abuse and control and has requested uncountable numbers of times that her partner stop cutting her down or frightening her. In most cases she has also requested that he stop drinking, or go to counseling, or talk to a clergyperson, or take some other step to get help. She has usually left him a few times, or at least started to leave, and then gotten back together with him. Don't any of these actions on her part count as demonstrating her commitment? Has she ever done enough, and gained the right to protect herself? In the abuser's mind, the answer is no. Once again, the abuser's double standards rule the day. — Lundy Bancroft

To be a liberal is to care about more than one's own belly or roof. It is to care about the rights of all men and women to live and breathe freely. Freely, do you hear me? This is not oppression. Stop saying that black is white and night is day. Freedom is not slavery! So stop with the Orwellian double talk and start working to help more than yourself. Lining your own pockets is the opposite of helping this world! — Robert Peate

I do not think I ever opened a book in my life which had not something to say upon woman's inconstancy. Songs and proverbs, all talk of woman's fickleness. But perhaps you will say, these were all written by men."
"Perhaps I shall. Yes, yes, if you please, no reference to examples in books. Men have had every advantage of us in telling their own story. Education has been theirs in so much higher a degree; the pen has been in their hands. I will not allow books to prove anything. — Jane Austen

George feels that, even if all this double talk hasn't brought them any closer to understanding each other, the not-understanding, the readiness to remain at cross-purposes, is in itself a kind of intimacy. — Christopher Isherwood

Actually ask him out, I can get Kevin to babysit and then we can all go on a double date, I've always wanted to do that! Ruby: Oh please, the innocence of the young and inexperienced. Ted and Greg will have absolutely nothing in common, they're like chalk and cheese; a bank manager and a possible bank robber. They will hate each other, the atmosphere will be awkward, no one will talk, all you'll hear is the munching of food in our mouths over the deafening silence like some kind of weird Chinese torture, we'll all refuse dessert, skip the coffee, pick up the check, and leg it out the door and feel relieved and promise ourselves never to meet up again. Rosie: How does next Friday sound? Ruby: Friday's fine.
Ahern, Cecelia (2005-02-01). Love, Rosie (pp. 83-84). Hachette Books. Kindle Edition. — Cecelia Ahern

When people talk about the 'feminization of labor', then, their discourse is often double-edged. The phrase is at once descriptive (work is generally more precarious and communication-based, as women's jobs tended to be in the past) and an expression of resentment ('women have stolen proper men's jobs! It's their fault - somehow - that we don't have any proper industry anymore!'). — Nina Power

I don't think you're going to pull the wool over anyone's eyes with all this macrame talk. — FayJay

As someone who is both an ethnic minority and openly gay, I often talk about how simply being who I am has given me a double awareness of the vulnerability that some Americans may be facing. — Mark Takano

Ah, me lovely Jo, let's mosey outside and talk." He finally released her hand. "I need to know where and when I can take ye." Really, demon, double entendre? As if this pirate had game! — Kresley Cole

A doubtful friend is worse than a certain enemy. Let a man be one thing or the other, and we then know how to meet him. — Aesop

Now, Watson,' said Holmes, ( ... ) 'you'll come with me, won't you?'
'If I can be of use.'
'Oh, a trusty comrade is always of use. And a chronicler still more so. My room at The Cedars is a double-bedded one.'
( ... )
'You have a grand gift of silence, Watson,' said he. 'It makes you quite invaluable as a companion. Pon my word, it is a great thing for me to have someone to talk to, for my own thoughts are not over-pleasant. — Arthur Conan Doyle

Disaster doesn't like being flirted with. Disaster wants to fuck. Disaster doesn't want to dance around and double talk and feel just a little horny and never act on it. If you so much as wink at it, Disaster is going to fuck you in the ass. — Brad Vance

Satan is the master of the ultimate double-talk and sophistry. He calls evil good and continues to confuse men with his cleverly disguised untruths. — Billy Graham

Those who talk on the razor-edge of double-meanings pluck the rarest blooms from the precipice on either side. — Logan Pearsall Smith

The US "Down Low" is thronging with young Black males who live double lives in the homosexual urban underground. These "Black" and "queer" young males, who have sex with men and live straight lives, reject "gays" as "faggots who dress, talk and act like girls", thereby ascribing a White effeminacy to gayness and embracing a Black hypermasculinity. — Chantal Zabus

Ben Affleck! Are you sure I can't talk you into Matt Damon? We could double-date — Rainbow Rowell

For large values of 1, 1 approaches 2, for small values of 2. — Keith Caserta

I thought you were makin' small talk about the weather."
"When have I ever made small talk with you?"
"When we first met."
"No, I made small talk with Bessie, your shotgun, until you removed her double barrels from my kisser."
Violet and a typical conversation with Harvey — Ann Charles

Detainees were not allowed to talk to each other, but we enjoyed looking at each other. The punishment for talking was hanging the detainee by the hands with his feet barely touching the ground. I saw an Afghani detainee who passed out a couple of times while hanging from his hands. The medics "fixed" him and hung him back up. Other detainees were luckier: they were hung for a certain time and then released. Most of the detainees tried to talk while they were hanging, which made the guards double their punishment. There was a very old Afghani fellow who reportedly was arrested to turn over his son. The guy was mentally sick; he couldn't stop talking because he didn't know where he was, nor why. I don't think he understood his environment, but the guards kept dutifully hanging him. It was so pitiful. One day one of the guards threw him on his face, and he was crying like a baby. — Mohamedou Ould Slahi

Two more [birds added to her cage]. I call them the Wards in Jarndyce. They are caged up with all the others. With Hope, Joy, Youth, Peace, Rest, Life, Dust, Ashes, Waste, Want, Ruin, Despair, Madness, Death, Cunning, Folly, Words, Wigs, Rags, Sheepskin, Plunder, Precedent, Jargon, Gammon, and Spinach!? - - - Miss Flite to Esther. [I thought a the last two a bit strange until I looked and saw the old definitions of gammon (as being double talk or obfuscation) and spinach (as being a spurious and unwanted growth). How appropriately summarized the situation! — Charles Dickens

She barely hid a smile. "That's a wizard's answer if I ever heard one." "Meaning that mages deal in double talk?" His grin was impish. "That's one of our two occupational hazards." "And what's the other one?" He laughed. "A deplorable tendency to meddle. — Barbara Hambly

Speech: 1. Tell the truth. Don't lie or turn the truth upside down. 2. Don't exaggerate. 3. Be consistent. This means no double-talk: speaking about something in one way to one person and in an opposite way to another for selfish or manipulative reasons. — Thich Nhat Hanh

Economists get very uncomfortable when you talk about virtue and vice. It doesn't lend itself to a lot of columns with numbers. But I would argue that there are big virtue effects in economics. I would say that the spreading of double-entry bookkeeping by the Monk, Fra Luce de Pacioli, was a big virtue effect in economics. It made business more controllable, and it made it more honest. — Charlie Munger

Foreign languages, I think they are important but I don't think it should be required because-actually I think they should be teaching you English and then teaching you how to understand double talk-a politician's double talk-not teaching you how to understand French and Spanish and German, when am I going to Germany? I can't even afford to pay my rent in America, how am I going to Germany? — Tupac Shakur

Double-mindedness means the faculty of holding two contradictory beliefs in one's mind and accepting both of them. We talk out of both corners of our mouths at once. — Billy Graham

We're not big on irony in Jamaica, sarcasm and double-talk. We tend to say things plainly, sometimes to the point of boredom. — Marlon James

Never say anything to hurt anyone. Moreover ... refrain from double talk, from shrewd and canny remarks that are designed to advance our interests at someone's disadvantage. We are to turn our back upon evil, and in every way possible, do good, help people and bring blessings into their lives. — Norman Vincent Peale

If Hank and I - Hank. She glanced down the long, low-ceilinged livingroom at the double row of women, women she had merely known all her life, and she could not talk to them five minutes without drying up stone dead. I can't think of anything to say to them. They talk incessantly about the things they do, and I don't know how to do the things they do. If we married - if I married anybody from this town - these would be my friends, and I couldn't think of a thing to say to them. I would be Jean Louise the Silent. I couldn't possibly bring off one of these affairs by myself, and there's Aunty having the time of her life. I'd be churched to death, bridge-partied to death, called upon to give book reviews at the Amanuensis Club, expected to become a part of the community. It takes a lot of what I don't have to be a member of this wedding. — Harper Lee

down. There just was no way someone that good looking was getting made fun of. Plus guys could sleep with a whole team and it would be okay. Talk about double standards. — J.L. Beck

The anticipation-speculation that comes with a weekly schedule is a double-edged sword. Because people have more time to talk about things, some crazy ideas get a lot of attention. — Cary Fukunaga

The reserve of modern assertions is sometimes pushed to extremes in which the fear of being contradicted leads the writer to strip himself of almost all sense and meaning. — Winston S. Churchill

I like people who dream or talk to themselves interminably; I like them, for they are double. They are here and elsewhere. — Albert Camus

But remember what I said about forgetting what I said? — Pseudonymous Bosch

A man once asked me ... how I managed in my books to write such natural conversation between men when they were by themselves. Was I, by any chance, a member of a large, mixed family with a lot of male friends? I replied that, on the contrary, I was an only child and had practically never seen or spoken to any men of my own age till I was about twenty-five. "Well," said the man, "I shouldn't have expected a woman (meaning me) to have been able to make it so convincing." I replied that I had coped with this difficult problem by making my men talk, as far as possible, like ordinary human beings. This aspect of the matter seemed to surprise the other speaker; he said no more, but took it away to chew it over. One of these days it may quite likely occur to him that women, as well as men, when left to themselves, talk very much like human beings also. — Dorothy L. Sayers

Trying to double talk, get myself in trouble talk. — Robert Palmer

Poor kids are much more likely to become sick than their richer counterparts, but much less likely to have health insurance. Talk about a double whammy. — Anna Quindlen