Ambiguous Language Quotes

That's the whole point of good propaganda. You want to create a slogan that nobody's going to be against, and everybody's going to be for. Nobody knows what it means, because it doesn't mean anything.

With rap, it's a funny thing. You can say things, and people can take 'em the way they wanna take 'em.

I use a lot of double meanings. I hide 'em like Easter eggs.

Sometimes in politics “yes” means “maybe” and “no” means “if.”

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

I am always surprised when people read double entendres into my innocuous babble.

Why, Mrs. Piper has a good deal to say, chiefly in parentheses and without punctuation, but not much to tell.

Whenever the words of a law will bear two meanings, one of which will give effect to the law, and the other will defeat it, the former must be supposed to have been intended by the Legislature, because they could not intend that meaning, which would defeat their intention, in passing that law; and in a statute, as in a will, the intention of the party is to be sought after

Ambiguity is the devil's volleyball.

It's really funny, because if you make up words, then people project their own meanings onto it, which I find interesting.

The juggle of sophistry consists, for the most part, in using a word in one sense in all the premises, and in another sense in the conclusion.

One of our defects as a nation is a tendency to use what have been called ''weasel words.'' When a weasel sucks eggs the meat is sucked out of the egg. If you use a ''weasel word'' after another there is nothing left of the other.

Weasel Words

Usually it is uses of words, not words in themselves, that are properly called vague.

This message, in point of obscurity, comes nearer my ideas of a Delphic oracle than any state paper which has come under my inspection. It is so cautiously expressed that every man puts what construction on it he pleases.

Why do you say vague things if you don't want to be asked about them?

A room full of words that are nearly the truth but not quite, each note fluttering off the steam of its rose like a broken butterfly wing.

These seem to me so ambiguous, so vague, so easily misunderstood in comparison to genuine music, which fills the soul with a thousand things better than words.

Trying to double talk, get myself in trouble talk.

All my plays have these titles that are oddly tricky. I like that something can look like one thing but mean two different things. Language is really unstable in that way.

One of our defects as a nation is a tendency to use what have been called "weasel words."

Using vague, slippery or just meaningless language is not the same as lying: it's not intended to deceive so much as to preserve options, buy time, distance oneself from others, or just to sound like you're saying something instead of nothing.

Political leaders are expert at saying nothing.

Do you have it on your person?" my father asked. "Jesus" I replied. "My person has it in her purse.

Consensus is usually made possible by vague language and shallow commitments.