Quotes: Word, Words, Part 1

Quotations

Words can be more quickly acquired, more accurately understood, and remembered longer through the elements that compose them. English words are predominantly of Latin or Greek origin, the percentage increasing as the level of vocabulary rises. Furthermore, modern science and industry turn constantly to Greek and Latin roots for the creation of new terms to meet new needs because (1) the meanings of these roots remain steadfast and (2) terms from Greek or Latin roots are internationally intelligible.
The more words you know the more clearly and powerfully you will think . . . and the more ideas you will invite into your mind.
The quality of words, the company they keep, their strange and sometimes unaccountable fortunes as they journey down through the centuries are rewarding fields of exploration.
Success and vocabulary go hand in hand. This has been proven so often that it no longer admits of argument.
When words fail, wars begin. When wars finally end, we settle our disputes with words.
No knowledge of a science can be properly acquired until the terminology of that science is mastered, and this terminology is in the main of Greek and Latin origin.
The terms used in the scientific world are largely, and in some sciences almost exclusively, derived from the classics [Greek and Latin].
The finest words in the world are only vain sounds if you cannot comprehend them.
When ideas fail, words come in very handy.
Actions lie louder than words.
It is of interest to note that while some dolphins are reported to have learned English—up to fifty words used in correct context—no human being has been reported to have learned dolphinese.
He can compress the most words into the smallest ideas of any man I ever met.
"Always" and "never" are two words you should always remember never to use.
In the end, we will remember not the words of our enemies, but the silence of our friends.
Say all you have to say in the fewest possible words, or your reader will be sure to skip them; and in the plainest possible words or he will certainly misunderstand them.
Man does not live by words alone, despite the fact that sometimes he has to eat them.
The body says what words cannot.
Become the change you want to see—those are words I live by.
In three words I can sum up everything I’ve learned about life: “It goes on.”

Was the first computer “bug” a real insect?

The story is told that one of the early electromechanical computers suffered a failure because a hapless insect had crawled into the vitals of the machine and been squashed between the contacts of a relay. The incident was written up in the log-book and spread from there throughout the whole of the infant computer industry. However, although the account seems to be genuine, the word is older: the event was recorded as an amusement for posterity precisely because the term “bug” was already in use. The term in fact originates not with computer pioneers, but with engineers of a much earlier generation. The first example cited in the Oxford English Dictionary is from the Pall Mall Gazette of 11 March 1889:

Mr. Edison, I was informed, had been up the two previous nights discovering “a bug” in his phonograph—an expression for solving a difficulty, and implying that some imaginary insect has secreted itself inside and is causing all the trouble.

It seems clear from the above information that the original “bug”, though it was indeed an insect, was in fact imaginary.

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