Cuttlefish Quotes:

The great enemy of clear language is insincerity. When there is a gap between one's real and one's declared aims, one turns, as it were, instinctively to long words and exhausted idioms, like a cuttlefish squirting out ink.

- George Orwell

topic: Truth, Real, Long, Insincerity, Language Words

He that uses many words for explaining any subject, doth, like the cuttlefish, hide himself for the most part in his own ink.

- John Ray

topic: Writing, Ink, Use, Using Words, Writing Words

Our disputants put me in mind of the cuttlefish that, when he is unable to extricate himself, blackens the water about him till he becomes invisible.

- Joseph Addison

topic: Water, Mind, Invisible, Cuttlefish

A mass of Latin words falls upon the facts like soft snow, blurring the outline and covering up all the details. The great enemy of clear language is insincerity. When there is a gap between one's real and one's declared aims, one turns as it were instinctively to long words and exhausted idioms, like a cuttlefish spurting out ink. In our age there is no such thing as 'keeping out of politics'. All issues are political issues, and politics itself is a mass of lies, evasions, folly, hatred, and schizophrenia. When the general atmosphere is bad, language must suffer.

- George Orwell

topic: Real, Lying, Latin, Insincerity, Long Words

How did an allegedly free people spawn a vast, rampant cuttlefish of dominion with its tentacles in every orifice of the body politic?

- P. J. O'Rourke

source: P. J. O'Rourke (2007). “Parliament of Whores: A Lone Humorist Attempts to Explain the Entire U.S. Government”, p.3, Grove/Atlantic, Inc.

topic: People, Body, Dominion, Cuttlefish, Spawn

There is the life of the plankton in almost endless variety; there are the many kinds of fish, both surface and bottom living; there are the hosts of different invertebrate creatures on the sea-floor; and there are those almost grotesque forms of pelagic life in the oceans depths. Then there are the squids and cuttlefish, and the porpoises, dolphins and great whales.

- Alister Hardy

topic: Ocean, Squids, Whales, Invertebrates, Endless Sea