Naming Things Quotes:

Even now, it's still hard for him to say it. I don't blame him. It's an icky word. Why couldn't whoever was in charge of naming things call cancer 'sugar' and sugar, 'cancer'? People might not eat so much of the stuff then. And it's so much more pleasant to die of sugar.

- Sarah Wylie

source: Sarah Wylie (2012). “All These Lives”, p.67, Farrar, Straus and Giroux (BYR)

topic: Cancer, People, Naming Things

The beginning of wisdom is to call things by their proper name.

- Confucius

source: "Conversations on Creativity with Darold Treffert, Part II: D". Interview with Scott Barry Kaufman, www.psychologytoday.com. April 13, 2011.

topic: Wisdom, Names, Wise Chinese, Chinese Proverb, Naming Things

It is a sad truth, but we have lost the faculty of giving lovely names to things. Names are everything. I never quarrel with actions. My one quarrel is with words. The man who could call a spade a spade should be compelled to use one. It is the only thing he is fit for.

- Oscar Wilde

topic: Love, Men, Names, Spades, Sad Truth

Names, once they are in common use, quickly become mere sounds, their etymology being buried, like so many of the earth's marvels, beneath the dust of habit.

- Salman Rushdie

topic: Dust, Names, Sound, Etymology, Naming Things

Naming things, breaking through taboos and denial is the most dangerous, terrifying, and crucial work. This has to happen in spite of political climates or coercions, in spite of careers being won or lost, in spite of the fear of being criticized, outcast, or disliked. I believe freedom begins with naming things. Humanity is preserved by it.

- Eve Ensler

topic: Believe, Careers, Political, Naming Things

By virtue of this science the poet is the Namer, or Language-maker, naming things sometimes after their appearance, sometimes after their essence, and giving to every one its own name and not another's, thereby rejoicing the intellect, which delights in detachment or boundary.

- Ralph Waldo Emerson

source: Ralph Waldo Emerson (1981). “The Portable Emerson: New Edition”, p.192, Penguin

topic: Essence, Names, Giving, Naming Things

You call a star a star, and say it is just a ball of matter moving on a mathematical course. But that is merely how you see it. By so naming things and describing them you are only inventing your own terms about them. And just as speech is invention about objects and ideas, so myth is invention about truth.

- Humphrey Carpenter

source: Humphrey Carpenter (1977). “Tolkien: A Biography”, Boston : Houghton Mifflin

topic: Stars, Moving, Ideas, Naming Things, Describing

For me, Christianity is not a genre. It's faith. The Gospel is not a genre either. It's faith. I definitely understand the semantics of naming things to give them some kind of distinction but I think my faith is pretty distinct. If you want to call it hip hop, essentially it is. That's the art form.

- LeCrae

topic: Art, Thinking, Giving, Naming Things, Semantics

I feel happy to be keeping a journal again. I've missed it, missed naming things as they appear, missed the half hour when I push all duties aside and savor the experience of being alive in this beautiful place.

- May Sarton

topic: Beautiful, Diaries, Half, Keeping A Journal, Naming Things