Quotes for All
What does purpose mean? It means the deepest desire for our short lives to mean something. . . . To speak a language of purpose is to return to first principles and to be able to answer, in plain English, the plain questions of Why? Why should we chip in to help someone else? Why … Read more
A passage is not plain English – still less is it good English – if we are obliged to read it twice to find out what it means. Dorothy L. Sayers
Mathematical knowledge is not-as all Cambridge men are surely aware-the result of any special gift. It is merely the development of those conceptions of form and number which every human being possesses; and any person of average intellect can make himself a fair mathematician if he will only pay continuous attention; in plain English, think … Read more
A word about ‘plain English.’ The phrase certainly shouldn’t connote drab and dreary language. Actually, plain English is typically quite interesting to read. It’s robust and direct-the opposite of gaudy, pretentious language. You achieve plain English when you use the simplest, most straightforward way of expressing an idea. You can still choose interesting words. But … Read more
I am allowed to use plain English because everybody knows that I could use mathematical logic if I chose. Bertrand Russell
[The play] is like to be a very conceited scurvy one, in plain English. Ben Jonson
What Women’s Lib might achieve if their ‘consciousness raising’ – or in plain English, brainwashing- campaign succeeds is a society whose members have identical roles but are perpetually at war with themselves; a society of males made neurotic by suppressed masculinity, of females made miserable by having masculine roles thrust upon them that contradict their … Read more