John Pollack > Quotes

“Language, be it remembered, is not an abstract construction of the learned, or of dictionary-makers, but is something arising out of the work, needs, ties, joys, affections, tastes of long generations of humanity, and has its bases broad and low, close to the ground. Its final decisions are made by the masses, people nearest the concrete, having most to do with actual land and sea. It permeates us all, the past as well as the present, and is the grandest triumph of the human intellect. —Walt Whitman”
― John Pollack, The Pun Also Rises: How the Humble Pun Revolutionized Language, Changed History, and Made Wordplay More Than Some Antics

“Mahatma Gandhi was known for walking hundreds of miles barefoot. Over time, he developed incredibly thick calluses on his feet, stronger than the soles of many boots. He also ate lightly and fasted often, which left him frail and gave him chronically bad breath. And do you know what this made him? A super-calloused fragile mystic hexed by halitosis.”
― John Pollack, The Pun Also Rises: How the Humble Pun Revolutionized Language, Changed History, and Made Wordplay More Than Some Antics

“Not to pun at all would be more challenging than most people might imagine.”
― John Pollack, The Pun Also Rises: How the Humble Pun Revolutionized Language, Changed History, and Made Wordplay More Than Some Antics

“As the late neurologist Max Levin theorized: "If play were not pleasurable, kittens would never chase each other's tails, and so would lack practice in the motor skills needed for survival. If there were no pleasure in the appreciation of the absurd, if there were no fun in playing with ideas, putting them together in various combinations and seeing what makes sense or nonsense -- in brief, if there were not such a thing as humor -- children would lack practice in the art of thinking, the most complex and most powerful survival tool of all.”
― John Pollack, The Pun Also Rises: How the Humble Pun Revolutionized Language, Changed History, and Made Wordplay More Than Some Antics

“All progress, ultimately, is the result of playing with ideas and seeing new ways of connecting existing knowledge in such a way that the sum is greater than its constituent parts. And making such unlikely connections is the essence of punning. Without learning to pun, we might just take speech at face value and wouldn't necessarily learn to hunt for deeper, different or related meanings.”
― John Pollack, The Pun Also Rises: How the Humble Pun Revolutionized Language, Changed History, and Made Wordplay More Than Some Antics

“Puns often seem to propagate in direct proportion to efforts aimed at suppressing them. Tell someone they can't say something, and they'll find another way, much as a river will eventually find a way round any mountain on its journey to the sea.”
― John Pollack, The Pun Also Rises: How the Humble Pun Revolutionized Language, Changed History, and Made Wordplay More Than Some Antics

“a suave Chinese gentleman named King, who had been a Confucian scholar and now was an elder in the church, taught the Bells the tones and characters of one of the world's most difficult languages.

A slight mistake of tone may produce a completely different meaning in Chinese so the Bell's good ear for music was useful. They needed all their youthful stamina and powers of concentration, but Nelson proved a natural linguist, driven onward by awareness that he must soon run the hospital”
― John Pollack

“Just about every sentence we say or hear is a recombination of existing words appearing in that exact configuration for the very first time.”
― John Pollack, The Pun Also Rises: How the Humble Pun Revolutionized Language, Changed History, and Made Wordplay More Than Some Antics

“subtle yet powerful role of analogy in persuasion. Because while they often operate unnoticed, analogies aren’t accidents, they’re arguments—arguments that, like icebergs, conceal most of their mass and power beneath the surface. In many arguments, whoever has the best analogy wins.”
― John Pollack, Shortcut: How Analogies Reveal Connections, Spark Innovation, and Sell Our Greatest Ideas

“In fact, puns appear so often and in such diverse forms and cultures throughout history that they appear to reflect something fundamental, enduring and perhaps even universal about human expression.”
― John Pollack, The Pun Also Rises: How the Humble Pun Revolutionized Language, Changed History, and Made Wordplay More Than Some Antics

“Not just because analogies make arguments, but because they often trigger emotions that override the circuits of reason, and sometimes at a subconscious level.”
― John Pollack, Shortcut: How Analogies Reveal Connections, Spark Innovation, and Sell Our Greatest Ideas

“play a catalytic role in innovation and decision making—often with dramatic consequences. From the bloody Chicago slaughterhouse”
― John Pollack, Shortcut: How Analogies Reveal Connections, Spark Innovation, and Sell Our Greatest Ideas

“Puns are at their core defined by multiplicity of meaning, not necessarily humor. The common expectation that puns should always be funny, or die in the attempt, is a relatively modern development.”
― John Pollack, The Pun Also Rises: How the Humble Pun Revolutionized Language, Changed History, and Made Wordplay More Than Some Antics