"Verbosity leads to unclear, inarticulate things"
About this Quote
It takes a certain politician’s discipline to warn you about too many words using too few. Al Gore’s line is a small, self-incriminating piece of rhetorical hygiene: a reminder that language isn’t just a vehicle for thought, it’s also camouflage for it. The intent is pragmatic (say what you mean, don’t make people work), but the subtext is more interesting: verbosity isn’t merely a stylistic flaw, it’s a governance problem. When public language gets padded, it stops functioning as a tool for accountability and starts behaving like insulation.
As a vice president and perennial policy guy, Gore lived in the ecosystem where “nuance” can be either intellectual honesty or a polite way to avoid taking a sharp position. His phrasing quietly admits how easy it is for institutions to confuse volume with substance. “Unclear” and “inarticulate” aren’t synonyms; they mark two failures at once. Unclear writing fogs the listener’s understanding. Inarticulate writing reveals the speaker’s own lack of command, the sense that the idea hasn’t been fully metabolized. Too many words can signal not care but uncertainty.
Context matters: late-20th-century American politics perfected the art of the overlong answer, the pre-spun soundbite that somehow runs on for minutes. Gore’s critique doubles as self-awareness about technocratic speech, where data and caveats pile up until the point evaporates. It’s an argument for compression as ethics: if you can’t say it cleanly, you may not be ready to do it publicly.
As a vice president and perennial policy guy, Gore lived in the ecosystem where “nuance” can be either intellectual honesty or a polite way to avoid taking a sharp position. His phrasing quietly admits how easy it is for institutions to confuse volume with substance. “Unclear” and “inarticulate” aren’t synonyms; they mark two failures at once. Unclear writing fogs the listener’s understanding. Inarticulate writing reveals the speaker’s own lack of command, the sense that the idea hasn’t been fully metabolized. Too many words can signal not care but uncertainty.
Context matters: late-20th-century American politics perfected the art of the overlong answer, the pre-spun soundbite that somehow runs on for minutes. Gore’s critique doubles as self-awareness about technocratic speech, where data and caveats pile up until the point evaporates. It’s an argument for compression as ethics: if you can’t say it cleanly, you may not be ready to do it publicly.
Quote Details
| Topic | Writing |
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