Quote

There may be no more-radioactive term in the English language than what we now almost always refer to as the 'n-word' - itself a coy means of linguistic sidestepping that is a sign of how perilous it is to utter the thing in full, even in conversations about language.

Jeffrey Kluger

Change background

T
T
T

Change font

TAGS & TOPICS

Jeffrey Kluger
Age: 70
Born: 1954
Born: May 21
Author
Contributing Editor
Journalist
Lawyer
Screenwriter
Writer
May
English
Radioactive
Mean
Conversation
Linguistics
Even
Full
Linguistic
Thing
Almost
Perilous
Always
Term
Refer
Word
Utter
Language
Conversations
Means
Sign

More quotes by Jeffrey Kluger

Image
We pride ourselves on being the only species that understands the concept of risk, yet we have a confounding habit of worrying about mere possibilities while ignoring probabilities, building barricades against perceived dangers while leaving ourselves exposed to real ones.
Jeffrey Kluger
Image
As the National Football League and other pro sports increasingly reckon with the early dementia, mental health issues, suicides and even criminal behavior of former players, the risk of what's known as chronic traumatic encephalopathy (CTE), is becoming clear.
Jeffrey Kluger
Image
Even the best computer in the world has no idea that it exists. You do. No one knows what creates that ineffable awareness that we're here.
Jeffrey Kluger
Image
We're learning how important it is both to preserve sibling relationships if they work and repair them if they're broken. We're also learning a lot about nonliteral siblings - stepsiblings, half-siblings - and the surprising power they can have.
Jeffrey Kluger
Image
There's no one place a virus goes to die - but that doesn't make its demise any less a public health victory. Throughout human history, viral diseases have had their way with us, and for just as long, we have hunted them down and done our best to wipe them out.
Jeffrey Kluger
Image
Sisters have ways of socializing brothers into the mysteries of girls. Brothers have ways of socializing sisters into the puzzle that is boys.
Jeffrey Kluger
Image
Marriage is a lot of things - a source of love, security, the joy of children, but it's also an interpersonal battlefield, and it's not hard to see why: Take two disparate people, toss them together in often-confined quarters, add the stresses of money and kids - now lather, rinse, repeat for the rest of your natural life. What could go wrong?
Jeffrey Kluger
Image
Part-black generally means all-black in Americans' minds. Just as part-Asian or part-Hispanic or part-anything-else usually puts individuals in those minority-groups' camps.
Jeffrey Kluger
Image
Becoming food savvy is one thing, but it's amazing how fast savvy turns to snooty, and snooty leaves you preparing three-hour meals that break your budget and that the kids won't even eat.
Jeffrey Kluger
Image
Spending $1 for a brand new house would feel very, very good. Spending $1,000 for a ham sandwich would feel very, very bad. Spending $19,000 for a small family car would feel, well, more or less right. But as with physical pain, fiscal pain can depend on the individual, and everyone has a different threshold.
Jeffrey Kluger
Image
My own life has in some ways been a decades-long tour of the sibling experience. I have full sibs, I have half-sibs, and for a time I had step-sibs.
Jeffrey Kluger
Image
Well, I think of the folks who are the climate deniers as the flat Earthers and the people who say the moon landings never happened.
Jeffrey Kluger
Image
There's a universe inside your head - a place of pictures and passions, of songs and sorrows. It's everything you are - and it's an utter mystery.
Jeffrey Kluger
Image
Vaccines save lives fear endangers them. It's a simple message parents need to keep hearing.
Jeffrey Kluger
Image
Humans are crude linguists from the moment of birth - and perhaps even in the womb - to the extent at least that we can hear spoken sounds and begin to recognize different combinations of language sounds.
Jeffrey Kluger
Image
A mere ape in our world may be a scholar in its own, and the low life of any beast may be a source of deep satisfaction for the beast itself.
Jeffrey Kluger
Image
What makes spinal-cord injuries as devastating as they are is that everything about them plays out in absolutes: they are instantaneous, utterly disabling and horribly permanent.
Jeffrey Kluger
Image
The families of many athletes - incensed at the sports leagues and hoping to make games safer overall - are increasingly making the brains of players who die prematurely and suspiciously available for study. Some athletes are even making the bequest themselves.
Jeffrey Kluger
Image
Kids whose puberty begins too soon face not just psychological risks, but physical ones too, with an increased likelihood of cancer, as well as skeletal changes that could prevent them from attaining their full adult height.
Jeffrey Kluger
Image
Operating-room errors hold a special terror for patients, if only because they seem like the most avoidable kind of complications. The occasional horror stories of patients who have the wrong leg removed or the wrong knee replaced generate the most headlines, as do tales of patients whose identities are mixed up entirely.
Jeffrey Kluger