Posts in Language
Words Worth Noting - December 2, 2025

“‘It is feeling and force of imagination that makes us eloquent,’ but ‘shout and bellow with uplifted hand, pant, wag your head, smite your hands together, slap your thigh, your breast, your forehead, and you will go straight to the heart of the dingier members of your audience.’”

Quintilian’s Institutio Oratoria according to Will Durant Caesar and Christ

Words Worth Noting - October 18, 2025

“Time is not the same for the speaker as for the audience. To the speaker it is too, too brief for what he has to say. For the audience it is a grim foretaste of eternity.”

Marshall McLuhan “‘Culture Without Literacy’/ Explorations 1, 1953”, quoted as X post from The McLuhan Institute March 11, 2025 [https://x.com/McLinstitute/status/1899494456417480991]

Words Worth Noting - October 17, 2025

“‘ALL ART is propaganda’, wrote George Orwell in 1940, ‘but not all propaganda is art.’”

Start of “Six books you didn’t know were propaganda/ Governments influence a surprising amount of literature. Some of it pretty good” in The Economist Nov. 3, 2023 [https://www.economist.com/the-economist-reads/2023/11/03/six-books-you-didnt-know-were-propaganda with no byline]