semantics

The rich are poor without the poor's acknowledgment of money.

Overrated is order.

Marriage converts a player into a polygamist.

Words are things. The words he is in possession of he cannot be deprived of. Their authority transcends his ignorance of their meaning.

In order to understand what happened, we'll use words in the way that they exist: as drawers of distinction between ideas.

[Metaphors] replace genuine uncertainty about the world with semantic ambiguity. A metaphor is a cover-up.

A major gap between many of the denominations stems from how people define some of the most basic terms, such as 'religion' itself.

There is absolutely nothing feminine about the colour pink, or, anything bad-luck'ish about the colour black _ in itself.

Looking at what 'foreplay' is, 'sexual intercourse' is a game.

We must think things not words, or at least we must constantly translate our words into the facts for which they stand, if we are to keep to the real and the true.

To make biological survival possible, Mind at Large has to be funnelled through the reducing valve of the brain and nervous system. What comes out at the other end is a measly trickle of the kind of consciousness which will help us to stay alive on the surface of this particular planet. To formulate and express the contents of this reduced awareness, man has invented and endlessly elaborated those symbol-systems and implicit philosophies which we call languages. Every individual is at once the beneficiary and the victim of the linguistic tradition into which he or she has been born -- the beneficiary inasmuch as language gives access to he accumulated records of other people's experience, the victim in so far as it confirms him in the belief that reduced awareness is the only awareness and as it be-devils his sense of reality, so that he is all too apt to take his concepts for data, his words for actual things.

Nothing complements a fast mind better than a slow tongue. And nothing aggravates a slow mind better than a fast tongue.

Causes of individuals presuppose causes of the species, which are not univocal yet not wholly equivocal either, since they are expressing themselves in their effects. We could call them analogical. In language too all universal terms presuppose the non-univocal analogical use of the term *being*.

God is not, like creatures, made up of parts. God is spirit, without bodily dimensions. Firstly, no body can cause change without itself being changed. Secondly, things with dimensions are potential of division. But the starting-point for all existence must be wholly real and not potential in any way: though things that get realized begin as potential, preceding them is the source of their realization which must already be real. Thirdly, living bodies are superior to other bodies; and what makes a body living is not the dimensions which make it a body (for then everything with dimensions would be living), but something more excellent like a soul. The most excellent existent of all then cannot be a body. So when the scriptures ascribe dimensions to God they are using spatial extension to symbolize the extent of God's power; just as they ascribe bodily organs to God as metaphors for their functions, and postures like sitting or standing to symbolize authority or strength.

He showed the words __hocolate cake_ to a group of Americans and recorded their word associations. __uilt_ was the top response. If that strikes you as unexceptional, consider the response of French eaters to the same prompt: __elebration.

Kevyn, Ennesby tells me you are building a time machine.Actually I'm finished.In one afternoon? Wow... Does it work?After a fashion....I put a whole lot of energy into it, and the next thing I knew it was time for dinner.-Captain Tagon & Commander Andreyasn

Arthur: If I asked you where the hell we were, would I regret it?Ford: We're safe.Arthur: Oh good.Ford: We're in a small galley cabin in one of the spaceships of the Vogon Constructor Fleet. that I wasn't previously aware of.

Do you wish me a good morning, or mean that it is a good morning whether I want it or not; or that you feel good this morning; or that it is a morning to be good on?