Language As A Disease Quotes & Sayings

I see a good deal of talk from Washington about lowering taxes-I hope they do get 'em lowered enough so people can afford to pay 'em — Will Rogers

I came to grotesque language in the patriarchal culture under the dictatorship. The body that was broken into pieces is a sick body. I put the disease of this world and my sick body together. — Kim Hyesoon

Did you know that the fundamental building blocks of life are not cells, are not DNA are not even carbon but language yeah 'cause DNA is just a four-character language and binary code is a two-character language and what these languages are saying is the very act of revealing, so you reach an X-point when language attains a level of complexity where it begins to fold in upon itself trying to understand itself and this is sentience. Did you know that the entire Library of Congress can be encoded in our DNA because all you have to do is translate a binary system into a four-character system to where you can decode the genes like you're searching a microfiche and if you were to genetically engineer the corpus of human knowledge into our DNA then we'd be able to genetically pass the entire library along from generation to generation like frickin' disease, man. — Ryan Boudinot

The human mind has evolved a defense against contamination by biological agents: the emotion of disgust.111 Ordinarily triggered by bodily secretions, animal parts, parasitic insects and worms, and vectors of disease, disgust impels people to eject the polluting substance and anything that looks like it or has been in contact with it. Disgust is easily moralized, defining a continuum in which one pole is identified with spirituality, purity, chastity, and cleansing and the other with animality, defilement, carnality, and contamination. 112 And so we see disgusting agents as not just physically repellent but also morally contemptible. Many metaphors in the English language for a treacherous person use a disease vector as their vehicle - a rat, a louse, a worm, a cockroach. The infamous 1990s term for forced displacement and genocide was ethnic cleansing. — Steven Pinker

I've never, ever tasted beer. — Mike Huckabee

Unequipped to hold their own in the ferociously competitive world of White America, in which even the language is foreign to them, the Navajos sink ever deeper into the culture of poverty, exhibiting all of the usual and well-known symptoms: squalor, unemployment or irregular and ill-paid employment, broken families, disease, prostitution, crime, alcoholism, lack of education, too many children, apathy and demoralization, and various forms of mental illness, including evangelical Protestantism. Whether in the favelas of Rio de Janeiro, the barrios of Caracas, the ghettos of Newark, the mining towns of West Virginia or the tarpaper villages of Gallup, Flagstaff and Shiprock, it's the same the world over - one big wretched family sequestered in sullen desperation, pawed over by social workers, kicked around by the cops and prayed over by the missionaries. — Edward Abbey

Valium rubs out speech marks and pops thought-bubbles. — David Mitchell

Not only is the actual word "hysteria" gendered - it once referred to an exclusively female disease, a mental illness thought to be caused by a malfunctioning uterus - there is a very long history of critics using accusations or innuendo about women's mental health or emotional stability in order to shut down their political voices. — Sady Doyle

Leo,you are a riot of color in my grey world". Shade Lewis to Leo Cutler (Drift) — Michael Dean

I think if you're writing about cricket, you're obviously writing about power, because cricket is such a loaded sport, much more so than soccer. — Joseph O'Neill

The Secret Language of Your Body truly is the essential guide to restore your body to its healthiest state and assist you to heal your life. Inna Segal offers invaluable insights into the underlying causes of illness and disease and provides practical advice which will undoubtedly empower many to self-heal. So read on and learn from the wisdom of this book, which can guide you to the life you were truly meant to live. — Bernie Siegel

I suggest that US foreign policy can still be defined as "kiss my ass or I'll kick your head in." But of course it doesn't put it like that. It talks of "low intensity conflict ... " What all this adds up to is a disease at the very centre of language, so that language becomes a permanent masquerade, a tapestry of lies. — Harold Pinter

Language is a virus, money is a nasty disease. — Jonathan Barnbrook

[Not achieving a nuclear test ban] would have to be classed as the greatest disappointment of any administration of any decade, of any time and of any party. — Dwight D. Eisenhower

What we need in medical schools is not to teach empathy, as much as to preserve it - the process of learning huge volumes of information about disease, of learning a specialized language, can ironically make one lose sight of the patient one came to serve; empathy can be replaced by cynicism. — Abraham Verghese

[M]ilitary metaphors have more and more come to infuse all aspects of the description of the medical situation. Disease is seen as an invasion of alien organisms, to which the body responds by its own military operations, such as the mobilizing of immunological "defenses", and medicine is "aggressive" as in the language of most chemotherapies. — Susan Sontag

I loved those Latin words for their dignity, their foreignness, and the way my tongue had to wrap around them. I felt that in learning the special language of a scholarly order, I was amassing a kind of force. This was the pure and noble side of the world, uncorrupted by secrets and trickery. How extraordinary that a word could serve as a shorthand for an elaborate tale of disease. — Abraham Verghese

Language change is not a disease, any more than adolescence, or autumn are illnesses. — Jean Aitchison

The brain-disease model overlooks four fundamental truths: (1) our capacity to destroy one another is matched by our capacity to heal one another. Restoring relationships and community is central to restoring well-being; (2) language gives us the power to change ourselves and others by communicating our experiences, helping us to define what we know, and finding a common sense of meaning; (3) we have the ability to regulate our own physiology, including some of the so-called involuntary functions of the body and brain, through such basic activities as breathing, moving, and touching; and (4) we can change social conditions to create environments in which children and adults can feel safe and where they can thrive. — Bessel A. Van Der Kolk

The pervasive brutality in current fiction - the death, disease, dysfunction, depression, dismemberment, drug addiction, dementia, and dreary little dramas of domestic discord - is an obvious example of how language in exploitative, cynical or simply neurotic hands can add to the weariness, the darkness in the world. — Tom Robbins

The warrior of light knows that everything around him - his victories, his defeats, his enthusiasm and his despondency - form part of his Good Fight. — Paulo Coelho

Her ability to use language, that thing that most separates humans from animals, was leaving her, and she was feeling less and less human as it departed. She's said a tearful good-bye to okay some time ago. — Lisa Genova

At some stage of development an officer had to stop following orders and start generating them. — Lois McMaster Bujold

There are no easy words for the insights of the spirit, and approximate language used in good faith can cause approximate truths to spread like a disease. — Densey Clyne

Disease [is] as one of our languages. Doctors understand what disease has to say about itself. It's up to the person with the disease to understand what the disease has to say to her. — Susanna Kaysen

I have a disease; I see language. — Roland Barthes

This is the kind of thing that makes sense to them; this is a language they know. They know what to do with'disease'. They know how to attach a doctor's medical descriptions to hope. — Amy Reed

The two women switched to their native tongue. Kate tuned them out. She understood only half of what they were saying. As with most Americans, Dutch sounded to her more like a disease of the throat than an actual language — Karin Slaughter

Most British playwrights of my generation, as well as younger folks, apparently feel somewhat obliged to Russian literature - and not only those writing for theatres. Russian literature is part of the basic background knowledge for any writer. So there is nothing exceptional in the interest I had towards Russian literature and theatre. Frankly, I couldn't image what a culture would be like without sympathy towards Russian literature and Russia, whether we'd be talking about drama or Djagilev. — Tom Stoppard

Auras tell a lot, Rose, and I'm very good at reading them. Much better than you friends probably are. A spirit dream wraps you own aura in gold, which is how I knew. Your personal aura is unique to you, though it fluctuates with your feelings and soul. When people are in love, it shows. Their auras shine. When you were dreaming, yours was bright. The colors were bright ... but not what expected from a boyfriend. Of course, not every relationship is the same. People are at different stages. I would've brushed it off, except ... "
"Except what?"
"Except, when you're with Dimitri, your aura's like the sun. So is his. — Richelle Mead

I wrote for magazines. I wrote adventure stuff, I wrote for the 'National Enquirer,' I wrote advertising copy for cemeteries. — Walter Dean Myers

Infinite speech is that mode of discourse that consistently reminds us of the unspeakability of nature. It bears no claim to truth, originating from nothing but the genius of the speaker. Infinite speech is therefore no about anything; it is always to someone. It is not command, but address. It belongs entirely to the speakable. — James P. Carse

Don't you find it odd that two of the foremost symptoms of insanity are the hearing voices and talking to oneself? Is it any wonder that language is an area of such interest in psychology?
(attrib: F.L. Vanderson) — Mort W. Lumsden

We used to say that hearing 90 percent of confessions was like being stoned to death with marshmallows! — Richard Rohr

For the first time, I understood the ancients' need to find explanations for why things happen. It's a quintessential human imperative. Random is not emotionally satisfying. Therefore, lightning was the bolt from an angry god. Crop failure was punishment for failing to honor the gods with a fatted calf. The plague happened because you took the Lord's name in vain or coveted your neighbor's wife. Going to church regularly and praying could forestall illness. And on and on. — Alanna Mitchell

Well, you know what happens to crime when the heat goes up. — James Hansen

How long's your vacation?"
A year. Maybe longer."
A year? What did you do? Win the lottery?"
Most americans we met on the road, or at least the ones without nose rings, had a hard time fathoming the idea of a year's travel. Australians and Germans would nod in "of course" approval. Our country men would fixate on language barriers or some hideous tropical disease. They'd talk about the nightmare scenario - a Third World appendectomy and not being able to tell the doctor to use clean needles. — Franz Wisner