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“No language as depending on arbitrary use and custom can ever be permanently the same, but will always be in a mutable and fluctuating state; and what is deem’d polite and elegant in one age, may be accounted uncouth and barbarous in another.”

— Simon Winchester The Surgeon of Crowthorne (1998)

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More quotes by Simon Winchester

The creation of any sense of unity among a population of potentially disharmonious settlers almost always requires the deliberate agency of man.

The Men who United the States (2013)

“I am not yet so lost in lexicography, as to forget that words are the daughters of the earth, and that things are sons of heaven.”

The Surgeon of Crowthorne (1998)

2 percent of America’s electricity now goes to keeping the Internet cool, to keeping the link unbroken, for America and for the world.

The Men who United the States (2013)

The language should be accorded just the same dignity and respect as those other standards that science was then also defining.

The Surgeon of Crowthorne (1998)

The future is a foreign country: they will do things differently there.

Land (2021)

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Attribution

Quote text and notes from Wikiquote: Simon Winchester (page history), available under CC BY-SA 4.0. Source quality and labels are our own summary of what Wikiquote records.