Geoffrey Nunberg Quotes

#1. ["Emoticon" is] one of the worst words ever--it deserves to die horribly in a head-on crash with infotainment.

Geoffrey Nunberg

#2. The Italian historian Armando Petrucci has done more than anyone else to revive interest in public writing. His groundbreaking Public Lettering: Script, Power, and Culture surveys the forms and uses of epigraphic writing from classical antiquity to the twentieth century.

Geoffrey Nunberg

#3. When the world changes, correlation goes away ... Causals are what endure.

Geoffrey Nunberg

#4. When it comes to being slaves to fashion, American managers make adolescent girls look like rugged individualists.

Geoffrey Nunberg

#5. Few people become assholes reluctantly.

Geoffrey Nunberg

#6. Donald Trump comes closer than anyone else to being the archetype of the species; crossing genres, he exemplifies all the ways an asshole can capture our attention. (164-65)

Geoffrey Nunberg

#7. Still, to paraphrase what John Stuart Mill said about the stupidity of the Tories, while not all people who claim to be politically incorrect are assholes, it's exactly the sort of thing an asshole is apt to say. (183)

Geoffrey Nunberg

#8. It's not odd these days to hear politicians trumpeting their own authenticity, a claim that an earlier day would have considered self-cancelling. But when Michelle Bachman, Rick Perry, and Rick Santorum say "I'm authentic," they're not evoking the shade of Neal Cassady. (102)

Geoffrey Nunberg

#9. There are only two reasons for buying a book, after all. Either we intend to read it, in which case most of us find a printed version preferable, or we don't intend to read it, in which case a printed version is absolutely essential.

Geoffrey Nunberg