The English language is an arsenal of weapons. If you are going to brandish them without checking to see whether or not they are loaded, you must expect to have them explode in your face from time to time.
Interpretation
Words can be powerful tools, but using them carelessly can lead to negative consequences.
In this quote, Stephen Fry highlights the significance of the English language as a powerful means of communication. He warns that if one uses language irresponsibly, without understanding or considering its implications, it can result in unintended harm or backlash, much like handling weapons unsafely. This metaphor emphasizes the responsibility that comes with the ability to express oneself verbally.
In practice
This quote could be used in a speech about the importance of responsible communication in politics.
I used many times to touch my own chest and feel, under its asthmatic quiver, the engine of the heart and lungs and blood and feel amazed at what I sensed was the enormity of the power I possessed. Not magical power, but real power. The power simply to go on, the power to endure, that is power enough, but I felt I had also the power to create, to add, to delight, to amaze and to transform.
To be human and to be adult means constantly to be in the grip of opposing emotions, to have daily to reconcile apparently conflicting tensions. I want this, but need that. I cherish this, but I adore its opposite too.
There comes a time when the blankness of the future is just so extreme, it's like such a black wall of nothingness. Not of bad things like a cave full of monsters and so, you're afraid of entering it. It's just nothingness, the void, emptiness and it is just horrible. It's like contemplating a future-less future and so you just want to step out of it. The monstrosity of being alive overwhelms you.
As someone who worked hard for a Labour victory in the 90s, do I regret it? Not really. It was bound to happen. And it'll happen with the next government, and the one after it. Because all governments serve us. They serve the filth.
It's now very common to hear people say 'I'm rather offended by that'.
You can't just say there is a God because well, the world is beautiful. You have to account for bone cancer in children. You have to account for the fact that almost all animals in the wild live under stress with not enough to eat and will die violent and bloody deaths. There is not any way that you can just choose the nice bits and say that means there is a God and ignore the true fact of what nature is.
What do we older folks live for if not for the care of the young, to teach and train them?
Hypotheses are lullabies for teachers to sing their students to sleep.
There is not human being from whom we cannot learn something if we are interested enough to dig deep.
I had just taken to reading. I had just discovered the art of leaving my body to sit impassive in a crumpled up attitude in a chair or sofa, while I wandered over the hills and far away in novel company and new scenes... My world began to expand very rapidly,... the reading habit had got me securely.
We prize books, and they prize them most who are themselves wise.
The man who never reads lives only one.
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