John Humphrys > Quotes

“The more clearly we are able to express ourselves, the less room there is for ambiguity. The more elaborate and the more precise our vocabulary, the greater the scope for thought and expression. Language is about subtlety and nuance. It is power and it is potent. We can woo with words and we can wound. Despots fear the words of the articulate opponent. Successful revolutions are achieved with words as much as with weapons.”
― John Humphrys, Between You and I: A Little Book of Bad English

“And what are they? They are Specific, Measurable, Achievable, Realistic and Time-related. How bureaucrats love their acronyms. Now, that’s fine except that ‘achievable’ and ‘realistic’ amount to the same thing. So couldn’t the criteria be reduced to four? But then it would be SMAT aims or SMRT aims, neither of which has quite the same ring. So SMART aims it has to be, which means that form-fillers everywhere struggle to find something to write in the ‘Realistic’ box that hasn’t already been included in ‘Achievable’.”
― John Humphrys, Beyond Words: How Language Reveals the Way We Live Now

“So what do I do when the call comes to take part in a ‘reality’ show? Like a gullible teenager with stars in his eyes and mush where his brain should be, I fall for it.”
― John Humphrys, Beyond Words: How Language Reveals the Way We Live Now

“language has consequences.”
― John Humphrys, Beyond Words: How Language Reveals the Way We Live Now

“Formality may seem stuffy but it provides fresh air and freedom”
― John Humphrys, Beyond Words: How Language Reveals the Way We Live Now

“once computers gain good language understanding and we can speak to them, then reading and writing are going to seem cumbersome’.”
― John Humphrys, Beyond Words: How Language Reveals the Way We Live Now

“prefix”
― John Humphrys, A Day Like Today: Memoirs

“We no longer watch television news but, in the language of the broadcasting bosses, ‘consume’ it.”
― John Humphrys, Beyond Words: How Language Reveals the Way We Live Now

“trust, at the most fundamental level, has disappeared”
― John Humphrys, Beyond Words: How Language Reveals the Way We Live Now

“G. K. Chesterton said that when a man stops believing in God he doesn’t then believe in nothing: he believes in anything.”
― John Humphrys, Beyond Words: How Language Reveals the Way We Live Now

“So my tantrums made good television. They also made me look a fool. The Observer’s television critic said that if he ever found himself sitting next to me at a dinner party he would probably drive a fork through my hand. And I don’t think he was joking.”
― John Humphrys, Beyond Words: How Language Reveals the Way We Live Now

“The measure of human success is no longer the life well lived but the lifestyle well lived.”
― John Humphrys, Beyond Words: How Language Reveals the Way We Live Now

“He has his world and I have mine and we each speak our own kinds of English in them. But we also have a shared world where we need a dependable common language if we are all going to get by. And”
― John Humphrys, Beyond Words: How Language Reveals the Way We Live Now

“Change, that all-encompassing word, has become a universal corporate mantra. We must change to survive. But change from what and to what? Change for change's sake is no solution to anything. Most people actually eschew change. It is emotionally disruptive, stress inducing and threatens that most fundamental of human needs - stability.”
― John Humphrys, Lost for Words : The Mangling and Manipulating of the English Language

“what the pictures cannot do is express the complexity that might help us understand why these terrible things are happening. Only words can do that. A world that depends more on images and dismisses reading and writing as ‘cumbersome’ will be a much cruder and probably an even more dangerous place. I”
― John Humphrys, Beyond Words: How Language Reveals the Way We Live Now

“Incidentally, it seems that ‘apartment’ has finally taken over from ‘flat’; I fancy they’ll soon have ‘closets’ rather than wardrobes. Anyway,”
― John Humphrys, Beyond Words: How Language Reveals the Way We Live Now

“accountability. Now there is a word with a solid – indeed a solemn – pedigree. The Good Book itself tells us that on the Day of Judgement everyone shall be required to give an account of themselves.”
― John Humphrys, Beyond Words: How Language Reveals the Way We Live Now

“Samuel Johnson said, ‘It is happier to be sometimes cheated than not to trust.”
― John Humphrys, Beyond Words: How Language Reveals the Way We Live Now

“If we’re going to stay competitive in a globalised economy, everyone’s got to be able to perform at the top of their game.”
― John Humphrys, Beyond Words: How Language Reveals the Way We Live Now

“We stopped being perfect around the time when Eve picked the apple and started coming on to Adam. That”
― John Humphrys, Beyond Words: How Language Reveals the Way We Live Now

“Funny how one little word can mean ‘full of or disposed to joy and mirth’, ‘homosexual’ and ‘rubbish’. It just shows that context is everything.”
― John Humphrys, Beyond Words: How Language Reveals the Way We Live Now

“Language so remote from the way we speak in the real world prompts the question: what’s behind all that, then? Gushing vacuity addressed”
― John Humphrys, Beyond Words: How Language Reveals the Way We Live Now