Look at this humpty dumpty orange motherfucker
“There’s glory for you.”
“I don’t know what you mean by ‘glory’,” Alice said.
Humpty Dumpty smiled contemptuously. “Of course you don’t – till I tell you. I meant ‘there’s a nice knock-down argument for you!’”
“But ‘glory’ doesn’t mean ‘a nice knock-down argument’,” Alice objected.
“When I use a word,” Humpty Dumpty said, in a rather scornful tone, “it means just what I choose it to mean – neither more nor less.”
Alice considered a little. “But surely,” she said in a sudden flash of inspiration, “you simply have to agree with me that ‘glory’ doesn’t mean ‘a nice knock-down argument’, it means ‘glory’.”
“Not in the slightest bit,” humphed Humpty Dumpty, “I disagree with you totally.”
“Ah,” replied Alice cunningly, “so you do agree with me, for when I hear someone say ‘I disagree with you’, I think they mean ‘I agree with you totally’, don’t you? When I hear a word, it means just what I choose it to mean – nothing more nor less.”
“It is a most provoking thing,” Humpty Dumpty cried, breaking into a sudden passion, “when little girls make it impossible to disagree with them.”
“So,” said Alice, “now you do agree with me that ‘glory’ means ‘glory’.”
“Wrong!” Humpty Dumpty exclaimed triumphantly, “it would be alright for me to say that ‘I disagree with you’ meant ‘I agree with you’, because I believe in that sort of thing; but you don’t, or you wouldn’t be being so awkward about it! You can’t go using other people’s arguments against themselves, that’s plagiarism!”
(“He talks about it just as if it was a game!” thought Alice.) Trying hard to conceal her vexation with the phantasmagorical egg, Alice delivered her coup de grâce : “I’m afraid that you can’t get out of it like that Mr. Dumpty, it just won’t do at all. You think that words mean whatever you choose them to mean, but in order to say that I disagree with you, you have to agree with, or understand, my use of words; and if you agree with me, then you can’t disagree!”
“It’s very provoking,” Humpty Dumpty said after a long silence, looking away from Alice as he spoke. “I’d rather see that done on paper.”
“The question is,” said Alice, “whether you can make words mean so little.” “The question is,” said Humpty Dumpty, “who is to be master – that’s all.”
