Speech is power: speech is to persuade, to convert, to compel. It is to bring another out of his bad sense into your good sense.
With words we govern men.
1st Earl of Beaconsfield
Whoever defines the word, defines the world.
The difference between the almost right word and the right word is really a large matter - 'tis the difference between the lightning-bug and the lightning.
Don't talk to me of your Archimedes' lever. He was an absentminded person with a mathematical imagination. Mathematics commands all my respect, but I have no use for engines. Give me the right word and the right accent and I will move the world.
Your words can permanently influence a life.
Words are really powerful. I don't believe that axiom at all - words can absolutely hurt you. Words can wound. They can do a lot of damage. I think they can do way more damage than sticks and stones. I'll take sticks and stones.
Once you can express yourself, you can tell the world what you want from it. All the changes in the world, for good or evil, were first brought about by words.
She was remarried to Aristotle Onassis.
The pen is mightier than the sword, but the tongue is mightier than them both put together.
Poetry is a sword of lightning, ever unsheathed, which consumes the scabbard that would contain it.
We have freedom of speech, but you got to watch what you say.
The more articulate one is, the more dangerous words become.
There aren't any magical words, really. Words just hold the magic.
Words can sometimes, in moments of grace, attain the quality of deeds.
If words don't have vibration behind them, and a real feeling behind them, then they're just words.
The greatest weapon in an ideological war is words.
The role of a writer is not to say what we all can say, but what we are unable to say.
Has the world ever been changed by anything save the thought and its magic vehicle the Word?
The turn of a sentence has decided the fate of many a friendship, and, for aught that we know, the fate of many a kingdom.
Poetry is a political act because it involves telling the truth.
He who wants to persuade should put his trust, not in the right argument, but in the right word.
Pithy sentences are like sharp nails which force truth upon our memory.
The agitator seizes the word. The artist is seized by it.
We know that words cannot move mountains, but they can move the multitude; and men are more ready to fight and die for a word than for anything else. Words shape thought, stir feeling, and beget action; they kill and revive, corrupt and cure. The "men-of-words"- priests, prophets, intellectuals- have played a more decisive role in history than military leaders, statesmen, and businessmen.
Words, once they are printed, have a life of their own.
