Words Matter Quotes

Words matter,' he says. 'The name you give things, it forms them when you speak. You must always be careful with your words. ~ Rebecca Roanhorse

A leader's words matter, but actions ultimately do more to reinforce or undermine the implementation of a team of teams. Instead of exploiting technology to monitor employee performance at levels that would have warmed Frederick Taylor's heart, the leader must allow team members to monitor him. More than directing, leaders must exhibit personal transparency. This is the new ideal. ~ Stanley McChrystal

And, yes, words matter. They may reflect reality, but they also have the power to change reality - the power to uplift and to abase. ~ William Raspberry

In the beginning was the word. Before all else, the word. So we speak as if words matter, because they do. ~ Dean Koontz

Words matter, words have import. ~ Douglas Kennedy

I'm a prolific overanalyzer. And I can always use 15 words in place of three 3, no matter what. ~ Maggie Grace

Words Matter
What people write and say affects others. Don't believe me? Consider these examples.
--Jihadists persuade everyday people to strap explosives to themselves and wreak havoc in public places.
--Words start wars and end marriages.
Words matter. ~ Fedora Amis

You've always called it a store, ever since we were kids. It's a bookshop. It's not like some other retail store. It might be the same in a whole lot of ways, but this bookshop is special. Books are special. Books are important. Words are important. Words matter, in fact. They're not pointless, as you've suggested. If they were pointless, then they couldn't start revolutions and they wouldn't change history. If they were just words, we wouldn't write songs or listen to them. We wouldn't beg to be read to as kids. If they were just words, then stories wouldn't have been around since before we could write. We wouldn't have learned to write. If they were just words, people wouldn't fall in love because of them, feel bad because of them, ache because of them, and stop aching because of them. ~ Cath Crowley

Public intellectuals are often put in the position of having their words, no matter how off-the-cuff, treated as doctrine. ~ Roxane Gay

Once, he'd dreamed of experimental fusions, that he would be the one to merge folk harps with anime. Now he saw the incommensurability. In his own words: matter and antimatter. The end of the world. ~ Karen Joy Fowler

When you're ready to live as the victor and not the victim, you have to change the language that you give to yourself and then you have to change the conversation that you give to others. Words matter. ~ Bobby F. Kimbrough Jr.

The world has loosened, like a woman preparing for bed who lets her hair flow free. And I am whispering the words, knowing that words matter, and smiling as I say them to the shadows of the gods of this place who linger in the air to watch me and hear me. ~ Colm Toibin

Some habits, in other words, matter more than others in remaking businesses and lives. These are "keystone habits," and they can influence how people work, eat, play, live, spend, and communicate. ~ Charles Duhigg

Prayer is the raising of the mind to God. We must always remember this. The actual words matter less. ~ Pope John XXIII

That smell - cigarette - it always made me think of him. He smoked his cigarette. I drove. I didn't mind the silence and the desert and the cloudless sky. What did words matter to a desert? ~ Benjamin Alire Saenz

A proverb is much matter distilled into few words. ~ R. Buckminster Fuller

When you can have anything you want by uttering a few words, the goal matters not, only the journey to it. ~ Christopher Paolini

When immortality becomes for us no longer a matter of academic discussion, but the most vital of all questions; we shall find our comfort where so many before us have found it, in the ancient words. ~ Henry Norris Russell

Words can evoke emotions, change minds, teach lessons, convey ideas, lift spirits, or simply make us smile. I am here to tell you that as a young boy, when I read the great authors, the words sang and danced for me; the words caused me to dream; the words caused me to laugh and smile; The words gave me hope; The words brought me to tears. Young and unaware, I wondered how this is possible-how can words on a page in a book have such a profound effect on me? So many years later, I believe I finally know the answer to that question: Words are the foundation of our humanity. We exist in our words. We are the words that we choose. Words matter. It's as simple as that. ~ Michael Bowe

One of the plainest truths about both towns and individuals is that they usually don't turn into what we tell them to be, but what they are told they are. ~ Fredrik Backman

In a world full of audio visual marvels, may words matter to you and be full of magic. ~ Peter Godfrey-Smith

People used to shout, "Stand up like a real man," in every possible context when I was a teenager. It took me a good few years into my twenties to realize that real men can also stay seated, shut up, and listen. And admit when they're wrong. So don't make the same mistakes I did. Never go to a game of anything and shout, "you're playing like a woman!" at an athlete, as though that word were the definition of weakness. One day, you'll be holding a woman's hand as she gives birth and then that'll make you feel more ashamed than you've ever felt about anything. Words matter. Be better. ~ Fredrik Backman

The fact is that hurting people hurt people, and children raised with condemnation in whatever form it takes are hurting people. Period. Words matter. ~ L.R. Knost

Words, words, mere words, no matter from the heart. ~ William Shakespeare

Words matter. Words make ideas. They preserve truths and history. They express freedom and they shape it. Words mold our thoughts. That gives them value and power. ~ Gregory Scott Katsoulis

Words matter. All semester, we were looking for the words to say what we needed to say. We were all looking for our voice. ~ Meg Wolitzer

Is it your wish that I should leave you now?" "Why would you think that of me?" His eyebrows rose, the vulnerability gone. "You are not a servant, Mariana, to be thus ordered from my sight." "No," I admitted, looking down at my feet, "I am not a servant. I am a mistress. A minor difference, I'll grant you." His eyes were steady on my face. "You are my love," he corrected me, softly, "and there is no shame in that. Do you wish this afternoon undone?" I raised my head. "No," I told him honestly. "I will not force you to my bed," he said. "I do not want a frightened woman, nor a coy one, but one who gives me love because she wills it so. If I make no promises, it is because the world is an uncertain place, and words matter little. But if you doubt the honor of my love, come," he stretched his hand towards me, palm upward, "let me renew my pledge. ~ Susanna Kearsley

Words are not trivial. They matter because they raise consciousness. ~ Richard Dawkins

She'd always been comforted by how many words there were in the English language -- more than a million. With so many words surely anything could be said, everything could be understood.
But what did the volume of words matter in any language when she couldn't even manage to ask the simplest questions? Will you tell me your story? Will you let me in to my own family? Isn't it my story, too? ~ Fiona Wood

I was moving around with my imperfect, broken pieces until you came across and stitched my flaws with your words. ~ Jasleen Kaur Gumber

Beginning in the 1980s, electronic trading detached the buyer from the seller, complex derivatives insulated the investor from the company, CDOs sequestered the lender from the borrower - in other words, the decade constructed a system that allowed us to rip each other off without fear of having to look at the ramifications of our actions. ~ David Sirota

A teacher cannot give you the truth
The truth is already in you
You only need to open yourself –
body, mind and heart-
so that his or her teachings
will penetrate your own seeds
of understanding and enlightenment
If you let the words enter you,
the soil and the seeds
will do the rest of the work ~ Thich Nhat Hanh

In all his writing he had tried to reconcile the words "reason," "logic" and "science" with the words "God," "faith" and "Qur'an," and he had not succeeded, even though he used with great subtlety the argument from kindness, ~ Salman Rushdie

She ached for him to touch her. As much as her words said "we can't" and as much as she was saying "no" in her head, her heart was saying "please kiss me."

"Please just grab me and kiss me before I can say no. ~ Jacqueline Simon Gunn

Don't forget to
raise your voice
when their words
hurt your soul.

Don't forget to shove,
when they try to hush you.

If every time you look
at yourself, and
all that you can see is
the ruined mascara,
dry lips and burning eyes
Girl,
that's the proof for you
to pack your bags and leave.

If they bury you
with the roses and
burn you alive
with their words
Girl,
that's the proof for you
to pack your bags and leave.

Don't forget to
raise your voice
when their words
hurt your soul.

Don't forget to shove,
when they try to hush you. ~ Jyoti Patel

I'm sorry, he said again, and this time he took those words and owned them. ~ Lauren Myracle

To have come from Ireland no matter how long ago is to be of Ireland in some part forever. ~ Frank Delaney

The distinction between 'prejudice' and 'principle' is itself a matter of prejudice. ~ Laura Bohannan

Words themselves are all the ghosts we need. ~ Donald Harington

When the Holy Spirit convicts us of sin, He does so to bring us to repentance and, ultimately, to bring us to reconciliation with God, to forgiveness, to healing, and to cleansing. In other words, when the Spirit of God convicts us of sin, His entire purpose and entire motive is redemptive. When Satan accuses us, perhaps of the same sin, his purpose is to destroy us. That's why Paul says: "Who shall bring any charge against God's elect? It is God who justifies. ~ R.C. Sproul

Tears are words the mouth can't say nor can the heart bare. ~ Joshua Wisenbaker

Words are real when we write them down. Taking the time to make them permanent makes them real. ~ Anna Todd

Syrian monk, Isaac of Niniveh: Many are avidly seeking but they alone find who remain in continual silence. ... Every man who delights in a multitude of words, even though he says admirable things, is empty within. If you love truth, be a lover of silence. Silence like the sunlight will illuminate you in God and will deliver you from the phantoms of ignorance. Silence will unite you to God himself. ... More than all things love silence: it brings you a fruit that tongue cannot describe. In the beginning we have to force ourselves to be silent. But then there is born something that draws us to silence. May God give you an experience of this "something" that is born of silence. If only you practice this, untold light will dawn on you in consequence ... after a while a certain sweetness is born in the heart of this exercise and the body is drawn almost by force to remain in silence. ~ Thomas Merton

Doubt is easy when it is not a matter of survival: we are as sceptical as we can afford to be, and it is easiest to be sceptical about things that do not fundamentally sustain us. It is easy to doubt the existence of a table, it is hell to doubt the legitimacy of love. ~ Anonymous

There are some men who, living with the one object of enriching themselves, no matter by what means, and being perfectly conscious of the baseness and rascality of the means which they will use every day towards this end, affect nevertheless - even to themselves - a high tone of moral rectitude, and shake their heads and sigh over the depravity of the world. Some of the craftiest scoundrels that ever walked this earth, or rather - for walking implies, at least, an erect position and the bearing of a man - that ever crawled and crept through life by its dirtiest and narrowest ways, will gravely jot down in diaries the events of every day, and keep a regular debtor and creditor account with Heaven, which shall always show a floating balance in their own favour. Whether this is a gratuitous (the only gratuitous) part of the falsehood and trickery of such men's lives, or whether they really hope to cheat Heaven itself, and lay up treasure in the next world by the same process which has enabled them to lay up treasure in this - not to question how it is, so it is. And, doubtless, such book-keeping (like certain autobiographies which have enlightened the world) cannot fail to prove serviceable, in the one respect of sparing the recording Angel some time and labour. ~ Charles Dickens

Our faith is really proven in the way we talk to ourselves. The loudest human voice you will listen to is your own. Choose your words wisely. ~ Christine Caine

You don't have to tell me if you don't want to." Her eyes flew open. Nathaniel was contemplating her with an unreadable expression. "It's alright," he said. "I know . . ." He considered his next words. "I know what it feels like to have things you can't say. To anyone. ~ Margaret Rogerson

Words have not been made to describe the state of meditation. Language allows us to bite around the edges, to nibble and taste, but never to report the essence. But still we try. Like a dream, never reported while it happens. Like an uncaged song, sweet and alive, but flying high. Like the moment of artistic creation, bright and new, unsullied. Meditation is an open window. We sit at the sill. A vista is revealed. There is no judgement, no anticipation, no memory or regret. In meditation we are without judgement. We sit alone, but there is no loneliness. ~ Richard Payment

I love you, Cleo," he said, the words finally coming to him, with no effort at all because of how true they were. "I love you so much it hurts."
Her eyes widened. "What did you just say?"
Magnus almost laughed. "I think you heard me right. ~ Morgan Rhodes

The people of Sydney who can speak of my work [on flying-machine models] without a smile are very scarce; it is doubtless the same with American workers. I know that success is dead sure to come, and therefore do not waste time and words in trying to convince unbelievers. ~ Lawrence Hargrave

I wonder, for example, if the twins' piano training had given them the Tomaini brand of dexterity with hand jobs? Could a non-musician learn it? Could I?

Children stumble through these most critical acts with no real help from the elders who are so anxious to teach them everything else. We were given rules and taboos for the toilet, the sneeze, the eating of an artichoke. Papa taught us all a particular brush stroke for cleaning our teeth, a special angle for the pen in our hand, the exact words for greeting elders, with fine-tuned distinctions for male, female, show folk, customers, or tradesmen. The twins and Arty were taught to design an act, whether it lasted three minutes or thirty, to tease, coax, and startle a crowd, to build to crescendo and then disappear in the instant of climax. From what I have come to understand of life, this show skill, this talk-'em, sock-'em, knock-'em-flat information, is as close as we got to that ultimate mystery. I throw death aside. Death is not mysterious. We all understand death far too well and spend chunks of life resisting, ignoring, or explaining away that knowledge.

But this real mystery I have never touched, never scratched. I've seen the tigers with their jaws wide, their fangs buried in each other's throats, and their shadowed hides sizzling, tip to tip. I've seen the young norms tangled and gasping in the shadows between booths. I suspect that, even if I had begun as a norm, the saw-toothed yearning that w ~ Katherine Dunn

After centuries of silence, someone or something was lying outside on the stone step . . .

"Are you deaf?" Death asked arriving abruptly with screams and cries and a fetid smell of rotting matter filling the room.

"Why are you here?" the Old Crone asked, knowing the answer before she asked the question. "Go away."

"When someone knocks you're supposed to open the door!" Death said, coughing as though she had swallowed a lot of water.

"What are you doing here?" the Old Crone asked again "and why are you amorphous? Show yourself! I don't like it when you look like nothing at all."

"Open the door!" Death rasped, appearing as a drowned cat coughing up minnows and river detritus. "Our future depends upon it! ~ Denny Taylor

Ullmann had once written that the secret of every work of art was the annihilation of matter through form. ~ Colum McCann

Use the words that live inside your head. And if the words that live inside your head are those of a sentimental Victorian troubadour, then please close your head in a door jamb until you kill all that overwrought prose in an act of brain damage. ~ Chuck Wendig

The planet belongs to all being; all beings are responsible. We all have to do whatever we can do no matter how small it is; nothing is too small. ~ Hamid Drake

You mustn't let men drive you to mangling the English language, no matter how sweet they are. ~ Marisa De Los Santos

We can bring into being, the things we dream. So much of what we are is, limited or expanded by, what we think. ~ Jaeda DeWalt

Justice is the first virtue of social institutions, as truth is of systems of thought. A theory however elegant and economical must be rejected or revised if it is untrue; likewise laws and institutions no matter how efficient and well-arranged must be reformed or abolished if they are unjust. Each person possesses an inviolability founded on justice that even the welfare of society as a whole cannot override. For this reason justice denies that the loss of freedom for some is made right by a greater good shared by others. It does not allow that the sacrifices imposed on a few are outweighed by the larger sum of advantages enjoyed by many. Therefore in a just society the liberties of equal citizenship are taken as settled; the rights secured by justice are not subject to political bargaining or to the calculus of social interests. ~ John Rawls

In a sense, one could speak of the secret life of colour. Despite its outward beckoning, like true beauty, colour is immensely hesitant in giving away its secrets. Painters learn to respect the hesitancy of colour and endeavour to refine their skill to become worthy of its revelations. A painter learns the language of colour slowly. As with any language, you struggle for a long time outside the language. There is a willed deliberateness to how you sequence the strange words to make a sentence.Then one day the language lets you in to where the words dance to your thoughts with ease and fluency. Perhaps for the painter there is a day when colour lets him in, when his palette sings with synergy and delight. ~ John O'Donohue

We boast that we have conquered Matter and forget that it is Matter that has enslaved us. ~ Okakura Kakuzo

Words are pale shadows of forgotten names. As names have power, words have power. Words can light fires in the minds of men. Words can wring tears from the hardest hearts. ~ Patrick Rothfuss