Robert Lane Greene Quotes

#1. Only 8000 different words appear in the Hebrew Bible, compared to the 20,000 or more that the average adult needs to know in most languages.

Robert Lane Greene

#2. His captivating speech came not from his grammar or vocabulary but from the joy he took in wielding them well.

Robert Lane Greene

#3. Pullum has special vitriol for Elements of Style, which he calls "E. B. White's disgusting and hypocritical revision of William Strunk's little hodgepodge of bad grammar advice and stylistic banalities" or

Robert Lane Greene

#4. Arguments about language are usually arguments about politics, disguised and channeled through one of our most distinctive markers of identity.

Robert Lane Greene

#5. I'd start to explain with the outward sheepish and inner pride of the nerd.

Robert Lane Greene

#6. for those to whom Lynne Truss is a hero, everything from spelling convention to word choice to logic is, somehow, "grammar." And

Robert Lane Greene

#7. Yesterday's abomination is today's rule.

Robert Lane Greene

#8. Like so many of his successors in the language-crank world today, though, (Jonathan) Swift not only loathes (the) banal and common change (language); he ascribes it to moral failing.

Robert Lane Greene

#9. I think flexibility, humility, and multilingualism should take the place of sticklerism, arrogance, and nationalism when we think about language. I

Robert Lane Greene

#10. There is really only one way to learn good writing: good reading and extensive writing and revising.

Robert Lane Greene

#11. Afrikaans was the language of the white minority in South Africa, and the forced learning of it created resentment among blacks. Even so, Nelson Mandela made it a point to learn this language in prison in anticipation that it would help him lead the whole of South Africa.

Robert Lane Greene

#12. Though it's true that (dictionary-maker Samuel) Johnson sometimes seem to feel that the language was in decline, he didn't rail against it with (Jonathan) Swift's anger. Instead, he hoped the example of his dictionary would temper that change by providing a distinguished literary example

Robert Lane Greene

#13. It is possible to communicate beautifully or boringly, in every language on Earth. But people don't like to believe this. They make self-aggrandizing myths instead.

Robert Lane Greene

#14. If you look at the historical record, you will find that language has always been in decline. Which means, really, and it never has.

Robert Lane Greene

#15. Too many people are too angry about language too much of the time. This time could be better spent listening, learning, and enjoying the vast variety of human language around them.

Robert Lane Greene

#16. Bryson says that "we tend to regard other people's languages as we regard their cultures - with ill-hidden disdain." Too true. Unfortunately, Bryson proves himself right with a series of stories that should have set off his own too-bizarre-to-be-true detector.

Robert Lane Greene

#17. Americans tend to use "nation" as a synonym for "country." But political scientists and historians, as well as many Europeans, tend to use the term for a much more specific phenomenon: a group of people who feel they belong together, whether they have a country of their own or not.

Robert Lane Greene

#18. A stickler hallmark is that those who speak or write differently can't merely be wrong; they must be depraved, too.

Robert Lane Greene

#19. Bryson says we have no word for the Danish hygge, then goes on to tell us exactly what it means: "instantly satisfying and cozy" (though

Robert Lane Greene

#20. As economists like to say, the plural of "anecdote" is not "data.

Robert Lane Greene

#21. Peeves are like that: my peeves are law, yours are unhealthy obsessions.

Robert Lane Greene