A Quote by Al Gore

I'm not a psychologist, and I don't know how to play a more sophisticated role than the one that I have played for quite a few years, and that is spending a lot of time with these hard-working scientists in the various fields of expertise that relate to the climate crisis, learning as fully as I can the truths they are discovering, asking them to explain it in language that's simple enough for me to understand and then use that language to convey the essence of it, and then letting the chips fall where they may.
Also, they don't understand - writing is language. The use of language. The language to create image, the language to create drama. It requires a skill of learning how to use language.
If a man is rich and strong anywhere, it must be on his native soil. Here I have been these forty years learning the language of these fields that I may the better express myself. If I should travel to the prairies, I should much less understand them, and my past life would serve me but ill to describe them. Many a weed here stands for more of life to me than the big trees of California would if I should go there. We need only travel enough to give our intellects an airing.
Photographers learn to interpret photographs in that technical way because they want to understand and use that 'language' themselves just as musicians learn a more technical musical language than the layman needs. Social scientists who want to work with visual materials will have to learn to approach them in this more studious and time-consuming way.
I am just fascinated by music and I want to know how to identify all the things I love about it; to me music theory is like learning another language and then being able to explain how much you love something more clearly.
And then it was, that grief and pain made themselves known to me as never before. Note this, because I knew the full absurdity of Fate and Fortune and Nature more truly than a human can bear to know it. And perhaps the description of this, brief as it is, may give consolation to another. The worst takes its time to come, and then to pass. The truth is, you cannot prepare anyone for this, nor convey an understanding of it through language. It must be known. And this I would wish on no one in the world.
If you're prepared to invest in a company, then you ought to be able to explain why in simple language that a fifth grader could understand, and quickly enough so the fifth grader won't get bored.
Religion is much more than language, but to be Christian does mean speaking Christian for most people. The language many of us use has contributed to the crisis in Christianity in North America. Traditional Christian language is becoming less familiar to millions of people. The language is frequently misunderstood by people.
Scientists tend to focus on what they don't know more than what they do know. And there are a lot of things we still don't know about the climate. But we know the difference between climate variability and climate change, and right now the amount of carbon in the atmosphere is well outside the variability pattern - and that's quite quantifiable.
I'm very curious about people, and one of the most difficult truths for me to accept as a person is that I'll never be anyone else, and I will never fully understand anyone's perspective other than my own. Because I've come to some understanding of that, I feel it's this very difficult but worthwhile challenge to get as close as I possible can to that. If the only way that we can do that is through language, then that's how it has to be done.
All I'm doing, all I have done for 40 years, is spend time with the best scientific experts, gain their confidence, and take advantage of their patience in explaining things to me over and over again in progressively simpler language that I can understand, so that I can read it back to them and get their sign off, where they say, "Yep, that's it, Al. You've got it." When I understand it, I know I can explain it to other people. When the scientists' predictions end up being true, I see that as an opportunity to say to people, "Listen carefully to what they're saying now."
Lying is the misuse of language. We know that. We need to remember that it works the other way round too. Even with the best intentions, language misused, language used stupidly, carelessly, brutally, language used wrongly, breeds lies, half-truths, confusion. In that sense you can say that grammar is morality. And it is in that sense that I say a writer's first duty is to use language well.
I think the most important work that is going on has to do with the search for very general and abstract features of what is sometimes called universal grammar: general properties of language that reflect a kind of biological necessity rather than logical necessity; that is, properties of language that are not logically necessary for such a system but which are essential invariant properties of human language and are known without learning. We know these properties but we don't learn them. We simply use our knowledge of these properties as the basis for learning.
We are at a time in history where everyone with any insight of the climate crisis that threatens our civilisation - and the entire biosphere - must speak out in clear language, no matter how uncomfortable and unprofitable that may be.
The lyrics are not an important thing to me. In fact, it can be a distraction. If I knew the language enough to know it was a horrible love song with stupid lyrics - like most of the popular songs are today in the English language that I hear - then it would be much more of a turnoff then if it would allow me to interpret it from the expressive capabilities of the vocalizing or of the sound itself, which allows me to create my own meaning for it, which elevates it into a higher piece of work for me.
For two extraordinary years I have been working on it - learning to write - but mostly learning how to tell the truth. At first it is quite impossible. You make yourself better than anybody, then worse than anybody, and when you finally come to see you are "like" everybody - that is the bitterest blow of all to the ego. But in the end it is only the truth, no matter how ugly or shameful, that is right, that fits together, that makes real people, and strangely enough - beauty.
Philosophy attempts, not to discover new truths about the world, but to gain a clear view of what we already know and believe about it. That depends upon attaining a more explicit grasp of the structure of our thoughts; and that in turn on discovering how to give a systematic account of the working of language, the medium in which we express our thoughts.
This site uses cookies to ensure you get the best experience. More info...
Got it!