Quotes about language

"The language of truth is unadorned and always simple."

Ammianus, Marcellinus on language
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"I do not mind what language an opera is sung in so long as it is an language I do not understand."

Appleton, Sir Edward on language   

"All true language is incomprehensible, like the chatter of a beggar's teeth."

Artaud, Antonin on language   

"A special kind of beauty exists which is born in language, of language, and for language."

Bachelard, Gaston on language
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"Language is a skin: I rub my language against the other. It is as if I had words instead of fingers, or fingers at the tip of my words. My language trembles with desire."

Barthes, Roland on language
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"All official institutions of language are repeating machines: school, sports, advertising, popular songs, news, all continually repeat the same structure, the same meaning, often the same words: the stereotype is a political fact, the major figure of ideology."

Barthes, Roland on language   

"If everything is perfect, language is useless. This is true for animals. If animals don't speak, it's because everything's perfect for them. If one day they start to speak, it will be because the world has lost a certain sort of perfection."

Baudrillard, Jean on language   

"Never resist a sentence you like, in which language takes its own pleasure and in which, after having abused it for so long, you are stupefied by its innocence."

Baudrillard, Jean on language
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"No language is rude that can boast polite writers."

Beardsley, Aubrey on language   

"Drawing on my fine command of the language, I said nothing."

Benchley, Robert on language
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"One can say of language that it is potentially the only human home, the only dwelling place that cannot be hostile to man."

Berger, John on language   

"Because language is the carrier of ideas, it is easy to believe that it should be very little else than such a carrier."

Bogan, Louise on language   

"The English language is rather like a monster accordion, stretchable at the whim of the editor, compressible ad lib."

Burchfield, Robert on language   

"The downtrodden, who are the great creators of slang."

Burgess, Anthony on language   

"Language is a virus from outer space."

Burroughs, William S. on language
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"Everything can change, but not the language that we carry inside us, like a world more exclusive and final than one's mother's womb."

Calvino, Italo on language   

"There is no such thing as an ugly language. Today I hear every language as if it were the only one, and when I hear of one that is dying, it overwhelms me as though it were the death of the earth."

Canetti, Elias on language   

"It is a mass language only in the same sense that its baseball slang is born of baseball players. That is, it is a language which is being molded by writers to do delicate things and yet be within the grasp of superficially educated people. It is not a natural growth, much as its proletarian writers would like to think so. But compared with it at its best, English has reached the Alexandrian stage of formalism and decay."

Chandler, Raymond on language   

"To have another language is to possess a second soul."

Charlemagne on language
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"I speak Spanish to God, Italian to women, French to men and German to my horse."

Charles V on language   

"If English is spoken in heaven. God undoubtedly employs Cranmer as his speechwriter. The angels of the lesser ministries probably use the language of the New English Bible and the Alternative Service Book for internal memos."

Charles, Prince Of Wales on language   

"Language is a process of free creation; its laws and principles are fixed, but the manner in which the principles of generation are used is free and infinitely varied. Even the interpretation and use of words involves a process of free creation."

Chomsky, Noam on language   

"One does not inhabit a country; one inhabits a language. That is our country, our fatherland --and no other."

Cioran, E. M. on language   

"Language is the armory of the human mind, and at once contains the trophies of its past and the weapons of its future conquests."

Coleridge, Samuel Taylor on language   

"As the language of the face is universal, so 'tis very comprehensive; no laconism can reach it: 'Tis the short hand of the mind, and crowds a great deal in a little room"

Collier, Jeremy on language   

"To a teacher of languages there comes a time when the world is but a place of many words and man appears a mere talking animal not much more wonderful than a parrot."

Conrad, Joseph on language   

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"The common faults of American language are an ambition of effect, a want of simplicity, and a turgid abuse of terms."

Cooper, James F. on language   

"And who in time knows whither we may vent the treasure of our tongue, to what strange shores this gain of our best glories shall be sent, 't unknowing Nations with our stores? What worlds in the yet unformed Occident may come refined with the accents that are ours?"

Daniel, Samuel on language   

"Even if you do learn to speak correct English, whom are you going to speak it to?"

Darrow, Clarence on language
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"It is still not enough for language to have clarity and content... it must also have a goal and an imperative. Otherwise from language we descend to chatter, from chatter to babble and from babble to confusion."

Daumal, Rene on language   

"Language is not only the vehicle of thought, it is a great and efficient instrument in thinking."

Davy, Sir Humphrey on language
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"The individual's whole experience is built upon the plan of his language."

Delacroix, Henri on language   

"Male supremacy is fused into the language, so that every sentence both heralds and affirms it."

Dworkin, Andrea on language   

"There is the fear, common to all English-only speakers, that the chief purpose of foreign languages is to make fun of us. Otherwise, you know, why not just come out and say it?"

Ehrenreich, Barbara on language   

"The words of language, as they are written or spoken, do not seem to play any role in my mechanism of thought. The physical entities which seem to serve as elements in thought are certain signs and more or less clear images."

Einstein, Albert on language   

"Might, could, would --they are contemptible auxiliaries."

Eliot, George on language   

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"The finest language is mostly made up of simple unimposing words."

Eliot, George on language   

"I like to be beholden to the great metropolitan English speech, the sea which receives tributaries from every region under heaven."

Emerson, Ralph Waldo on language   

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"Language is the archives of history."

Emerson, Ralph Waldo on language
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"Language is a city to the building of which every human being brought a stone."

Emerson, Ralph Waldo on language
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