Carolina QuotesIf we share to a large extent in the mutuality of spirit which makes meaning possible, we are receptive to true meanings; if we do not, we may accept wrong or perverted ones. And since there is no way of getting outside the human imagination to decide otherwise what a word should mean, we are compelled to realize that the most imaginative users of language are those who are going to have the greatest influence upon vocabulary in the long run.
Richard M. Weaver Carolinian
Source
“Relativism and the Use of Language,” pp. 123-124.
- work
- Language is Sermonic (1970)
- year
- 1970
- locator
- pp. 123-124
Cite this record
“If we share to a large extent in the mutuality of spirit whi…” Richard M. Weaver. Carolina Quotes, record CQ-96CB8CCC82. https://carolinaquotes.com/quote/96cb8ccc82
More from Richard M. Weaver
The semanticists are exactly wrong in regarding language as an obstruction or series of pitfalls. Language, on the contrary, appears as a great storehouse of universal memory, or it may be said to serve as a net, not imprisoning us but supporting us and aiding us to get at a meaning beyond present meaning through the very fact that it embodies others’ experiences.
There are some despotic governments so filled with a feeling of insecurity that they regard the free life of culture as a threat to their existence. … On the other extreme is the kind of popular government which is so distrustful of all forms of distinction that it sees even in the cultivated individual a menace to its existence. Such states are likely to maintain a pressure which discourages cultural endeavor, although the pressure may be exerted through social channels.
Until the world perceives that “good” cannot be applied to a thing because it is our own, and “bad” because it is another’s, there is no prospect of realizing community.