
Have you ever heard of a politician who is short on words? A terse politician is about as common as a dancing potato, and as unelectable as a vampire who wants to raise taxes.
Surely presidents of the past have something to say about words, right? As surely as more politicians are announcing their presidential candidacies (with lots of words), voices of the past are echoing through the hallowed halls of government.
For the sake of staying apolitical, I won’t include any presidential quotes from the past fifty years; rather, I’m going to shed light on some of the words about words that have staying power.
In an 1819 letter, John Adams wrote, “Abuse of words has been the great...