Geoffrey K. Pullum quotes
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“Last week a former Royal Marine who is the boyfriend of the model Kelly Brooks crashed into a bus stop while driving a van carrying a load of dead badgers. I mention this solely to remind you that linguists are not kidding when they say … that your command of English enables you to understand sentences that have never occurred before in the entire history of the human species.”
-- Geoffrey K. Pullum -
“You can't get a leopard to change his spots. In fact, now that I come to think of it, you can't really get a leopard to appreciate the notion that it has spots. You can explain it carefully to the leopard, but it will just sit there looking at you, knowing that you are made of meat. After a while it will perhaps kill you.”
-- Geoffrey K. PullumSource : "Less Than Three Years: A Policy Revision". itre.cis.upenn.edu. January 04, 2007.
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“The Da Vinci Code may well be the only novel ever written that begins with the word 'renowned'... I think what enabled the first word to tip me off that I was about to spend a number of hours in the company of one of the worst prose stylists in the history of literature was this. Putting curriculum vitae details into complex modifiers on proper names or definite descriptions is what you do in journalistic stories about deaths; you just don't do it in describing an event in a narrative... Why did I keep reading? Because London Heathrow is a long way from San Francisco International.”
-- Geoffrey K. Pullum
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“I can now say without hesitation the Marine Corps was the best foster home I ever had.”
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Source : Aaron Swartz (2016). “The Boy Who Could Change the World: The Writings of Aaron Swartz”, p.188, The New Press
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“Creating something new is easy, creating something that lasts is the challenge.”
Source : Adam Braun (2015). “The Promise of a Pencil: How an Ordinary Person Can Create Extraordinary Change”, p.171, Simon and Schuster
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