Abuse of Language—Abuse of Power Quotes

“Whoever speaks to another person--not simply, we presume, in spontaneous conversation but using well-considered words, and whoever in so doing is explicitly not committed to the truth--whoever, in other words, is in this guided by something other than the truth--such a person, from that moment on, no longer considers the other as partner, as equal. In fact, he no longer respects the other as a human person. From that moment on , to be precise, all conversation ceases; all dialogue and all communication come to an end.”
― Josef Pieper, Abuse of Language—Abuse of Power

“This lesson, in a nutshell, says: the abuse of political power is fundamentally connected with the sophistic abuse of the word, indeed finds in it the fertile soil in which to hide and grow and get ready, so much so that the latent potential of the totalitarian poison can be ascertained, as it were, by observing the symptom of the public abuse of language. The degradation, too, of man through man, alarmingly evident in the acts of physical violence committed by all tyrannies (concentration camps, torture), has its beginning, certainly much less alarmingly, at that almost imperceptible moment when the word loses its dignity.”
― Josef Pieper, Abuse of Language—Abuse of Power

“Public discourse, the moment it becomes basically neutralized with regard to a strict standard of truth, stands by its nature ready to serve as an instrument in the hands of any ruler to pursue all kinds of power schemes.”
― Josef Pieper, Abuse of Language—Abuse of Power