Euphemism Quotes - Page 3

• Beauty of style and harmony and grace and good rhythm depend on simplicity - I mean the true simplicity of a rightly and nobly ordered mind and character, not that other simplicity which is only a euphemism for folly.

  Plato

  Plato, Character, Mean

  Plato (2013). “The Republic: A Socratic Dialogue Concerning the Definition of Justice and the Order and Character of the Just City-State and the Just Man (Beloved Books Edition)”, p.322, Lulu Press, Inc

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• Euphemisms, vague terminology or calls for discussions with Turkey to get at the truth are just some of the dodges Congress and the administration have used to avoid Turkish discomfort with its Ottoman past.

  Adam Schiff

  Past, Turkeys, Ottomans

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• Users of clichés frequently have more sinister intentions beyond laziness and conventional thinking. Relabelling events often entails subtle changes of meaning. War produces many euphemisms, downplaying or giving verbal respectability to savagery and slaughter.

  Patrick Cockburn

  War, Thinking, Giving

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• It hurt, and that is not a euphemism. It hurt like a beating.

  John Green

  Hurt, It Hurts

  John Green (2015). “Looking For Alaska Special 10th Anniversary Edition”, p.189, Penguin

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• Global governance is just a euphemism for global government.

  Jacques Attali

  Government, Governance

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• Euphemisms, like fashions, have their day and pass, perhaps to return at another time. Like the guests at a masquerade ball, they enjoy social approval only so long as they retain the capacity for deception.

  Freda Adler

  Fashion, Long, Deception

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• Spoilt is a euphemism for loved.

  James Nesbitt

  Spoilt

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• Affirmative action was designed originally for "women and other minorities" but the phrase has become just another tortured euphemism. Female conscientiousness and eagerness to please have always made women good students and natural test takers. Jews have gloried in scholarship throughout the ages, and Asians of both sexes score so high on SATs and IQ tests that they regard affirmative action as an impediment. Affirmative action really means favoritism for blacks for the sake of racial peace, but the favor is pure chimera, and so, increasingly, is the peace.

  Florence King

  Sex, Mean, Race

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• We need to make sure that whenever we're engaging in a cyber-warfare campaign, a cyber-espionage campaign in the United States, that we understand the word cyber is used as a euphemism for the internet, because the American public would not be excited to hear that we're doing internet warfare campaigns, internet espionage campaigns, because we realize that we ourselves are impacted by it.

  Edward Snowden

  United States, Warfare, Needs

  Source: www.pbs.org

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• In the weeks prior to the war to liberate Afghanistan, a good friend of mine would ask me almost every day, “Why aren't we killing people yet?” And I never had a good answer for him. Because one of the most important and vital things the United States could do after 9/11 was to kill people. Call it a “forceful response,” “decisive action” ' whatever. Those are all nice euphemisms for killing people. And the world is a better place because America saw the necessity of putting steel beneath the velvet of those euphemisms.

  Jonah Goldberg

  War, Nice, Good Friend

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• The inflated style is itself a kind of euphemism. A mass of Latin words falls upon the facts like soft snow, blurring the outlines and covering up all the details. The great enemy of clear language is insincerity.

  George Orwell

  Latin, Fall, Political Language

  George Orwell, Keith Gessen (2009). “All Art Is Propaganda: Critical Essays”, p.282, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt

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• Tact is kind; diplomacy is useful; euphemism is harmless and sometimes entertaining

  Julian Burnside

  Kind, Sometimes, Diplomacy

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• We have entered a period of intolerance which combines, as it sometimes does in America, with a sugary taste for euphemism. This conjunction fosters events that go beyond the wildest dream of satire- if satire existed in America anymore; perhaps the reason for its weakness is that reality has superseded it.

  Robert Hughes

  Dream, Reality, America

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• It's often the case that when a critic uses an embarrassingly accurate term to describe what a wrong-doer is doing, the wrong-doer protests: "Why don't you use my white-washed, conscience-soothing euphemism?" Such euphemisms, they claim, help promote "civilized debate."

  Steve Kangas

  White, Use, Doers

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• When you say a wall, you mean a wall. You want to build a fence, you say fence. You don't use it as a euphemism for a virtual, say surveillance from hot air balloons that are floating over the border which some people have advocated.

  Steve King

  Wall, Mean, Air

  Source: www.realclearpolitics.com

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• There should be a new, more honest euphemism. Like, I'm leaving office because I plan to solicit more anonymous sex in bathrooms.

  Tina Fey

  Sex, Office, Leaving

  "Tina Fey, Movie Star? Not Quite Yet, She Says". www.wbur.org. March 22, 2013.

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• [Madness] happened so frequently. I think what I was most maddest about - and it's in the book [Speaking Freely: A Memoir] - when the House and the Senate, back in 1984, were debating a bill that would - at least delay and maybe stop some of the ex - summary execution of disabled children - infants. And the Down syndrome kids and other kids had been, in some cases, routinely let die, to use the euphemism.

  Nat Hentoff

  Children, Book, Kids

  Source: thedailyhatch.org

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• Being fat just a fact. It feels important to me to speak the truth about that, and to not use a euphemism. Euphemisms are things we use when we want to dance around something or don't want to say it. I don't want to be something that is avoided. And I am my body.

  Lindy West

  Important, Speak, Speak The Truth

  Source: www.macleans.ca

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• All euphemisms are dishonest, but many are designed to make life easier

  Kate Burridge

  Easier

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• Underhand euphemism are used, not so much to conceal offence and to deliberately disguise a topic and deceive

  Kate Burridge

  Topics, Deceiving, Used

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• Show some mercy to this chair which has stretched out its arms to you for so long; please satisfy its desire to embrace you!

  Moliere

  Long, Desire, Arms

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• The terms "idiot" and "lunatic" were acceptable diagnostic terms in England up until 1959. "Imbecile" and "feeble-minded person" were, likewise, listed as official categories in the 1913 Mental Deficiency Act. England has always lagged a bit behind in discarding outdated terms for the disadvantaged. When I was there in 1980, it was still possible to shop for used clothing at the local Spastic Shop. That is, compared to the United States, where it takes, oh, about twenty-five minutes for a diagnostic euphemism to become a conversational faux pas.

  Mary Roach

  Imbeciles, England, Twenties

  Mary Roach (2010). “Six Feet Over: Adventures in the Afterlife”, p.56, Canongate Books

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• As any sin passes through its stages from temptation, to toleration, to approval, its name is first euphemized, then avoided, then forgotten. A colleague tells me that some of his fellow legal scholars call child molestation "intergenerational intimacy": that's euphemism. A good-hearted editor tried to talk me out of using the term "sodomy": that's avoidance. My students don't know the word "fornication" at all: that's forgetfulness.

  J. Budziszewski

  Children, Editors, Names

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• When I heard you could get a disease from playing with your prairie dog, I thought, 'Wow, what a euphemism.' I thought playing with my prairie dog was the best way to avoid diseases.

  Greg Giraldo

  Dog, Disease, Wow

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• We have entered a period of intolerance which combines, as it sometimes does in America, with a sugary taste for euphemism.

  Robert Hughes

  America, Tolerance, Doe

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