Richard M. Weaver Quotes About Language

• One of the most important revelations about a period comes in its theory of language, for that informs us whether language is viewed as a bridge to the noumenal or as a body of fictions convenient for grappling with transitory phenomena.

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  Richard M. Weaver

  Richard M. Weaver (2013). “Ideas Have Consequences: Expanded Edition”, p.136, University of Chicago Press

  1981

• Any utterance is a major assumption of responsibility, and the assumption that one can avoid that responsibility by doing something to language itself is one of the chief considerations of the Phaedrus.

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  Richard M. Weaver

  Richard M. Weaver (1985). “The Ethics of Rhetoric”, p.6, Psychology Press

  342

• In recognizing that words have power to define and to compel, the semanticists are actually testifying to the philosophic quality of language which is the source of their vexation. In an attempt to get rid of that quality, they are looking for some neutral means which will be a nonconductor of the current called "emotion" and its concomitant of evaluation.

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  Richard M. Weaver

  Richard M. Weaver (2013). “Ideas Have Consequences: Expanded Edition”, p.138, University of Chicago Press

  2779

• The semanticists are exactly wrong in regarding language as an obstruction or series of pitfalls. Language, on the contrary, appears as a great storehouse of universal memory, or it may be said to serve as a net, not imprisoning us but supporting us and aiding us to get at a meaning beyond present meaning through the very fact that it embodies others' experiences.

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  Richard M. Weaver

  Richard M. Weaver (2013). “Ideas Have Consequences”, p.158, University of Chicago Press

  306

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