Word: verbalism
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Dates: during 1940-1949
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...point out a curious relationship between the two stories? Korzybski says that what's wrong with people with "Aristotelian orientations" is that they tend to build their attitudes and their lives on verbal definitions . . . His "non-Aristotelian" theory is directed toward getting people past their definitions and words, i.e., blasting a few holes in the verbal wall that stands between them and reality...
...Matter of Views. As Churchill had seen him at close range, Vyacheslav Molotov was "a man of outstanding ability and cold-blooded ruthlessness . . . His cannonball head, black mustache and comprehending eyes, his slab face, his verbal adroitness and imperturbable demeanor, were appropriate manifestations of his qualities and skill. He was above all men fitted to be the agent and instrument of the policy of an incalculable machine...
...nonverbal facts, each one different from another and each one forever changing. A man's nervous system can never take in all the characteristics of a particular fact: it merely "abstracts" certain parts and reacts to those. After abstracting once, a man will abstract again to make a verbal statement about the fact. He can then go on to make statements about statements about statements...
...Bevin really want agreement? It was hard to tell from his hesitation in the days preceding recognition of Israel by Britain. Winston Churchill, fresh and saucy after a vacation on the French Riviera, raked him with merciless verbal talons. Churchill spoke of "folly, fatuity and futility . . . the quintessence of maladresse" and compared Bevin to a cuttlefish which retires "under a cloud of inky water and vapor . . . to some obscure retreat...
...them have their good points, and together form a sort of triumphal procession. They range from the slow torching of So in Love Am I to the fast jive of Too Darn Hot, from the musical brio of We Open in Venice to the verbal lift of Always True to You (In My Fashion). And again & again melody and mockery go hand in hand-nowhere better than in Wunderbar, a charming bit of schmalz-and a devilish parody...