Quotes about language

"Language ought to be the joint creation of poets and manual workers."

Orwell, George on language   

"We invent the world through language. The world occurs through language."

Pancoast, Mal on language   

"Man, even man debased by the neocapitalism and pseudosocialism of our time, is a marvelous being because he sometimes speaks. Language is the mark, the sign, not of his fall but of his original innocence. Through the Word we may regain the lost kingdom and recover powers we possessed in the far-distant past."

Paz, Octavio on language   

"I wonder what language truck drivers are using, now that everyone is using theirs?"

Pfizer, Sydney on language   

"You can't write about people out of textbooks, and you can't use jargon. You have to speak clearly and simply and purely in a language that a six-year-old child can understand; and yet have the meanings and the overtones of language, and the implications, that appeal to the highest intelligence."

Porter, Katherine Anne on language   

"We might hypothetically possess ourselves of every technological resource on the North American continent, but as long as our language is inadequate, our vision remains formless, our thinking and feeling are still running in the old cycles, our process may be revolutionary but not transformative."

Rich, Adrienne on language   

"When a language creates -- as it does -- a community within the present, it does so only by courtesy of a community between the present and the past."

Ricks, Christopher on language   

"My God! The English language is a form of communication! Conversation isn't just crossfire where you shoot and get shot at! Where you've got to duck for your life and aim to kill! Words aren't only bombs and bullets -- no, they're little gifts, containing meanings!"

Roth, Philip on language   

"If you want to tell the untold stories, if you want to give voice to the voiceless, you've got to find a language. Which goes for film as well as prose, for documentary as well as autobiography. Use the wrong language, and you're dumb and blind."

Rushdie, Salman on language   

"The secret of language is the secret of sympathy and its full charm is possible only to the gentle."

Ruskin, John on language   

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"Language furnishes the best proof that a law accepted by a community is a thing that is tolerated and not a rule to which all freely consent."

Saussure, Ferdinand De on language   

"A linguistic system is a series of differences of sound combined with a series of differences of ideas."

Saussure, Ferdinand De on language   

"The word of man is the most durable of all material."

Schopenhauer, Arthur on language   

"It was Greek to me."

Shakespeare, William on language   

"The English have no respect for their language, and will not teach their children to speak it."

Shaw, George Bernard on language   

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"If the announcer can produce the impression that he is a gentlemen, he may pronounce as he pleases."

Shaw, George Bernard on language   

"Language can only deal meaningfully with a special, restricted segment of reality. The rest, and it is presumably the much larger part, is silence."

Steiner, George on language   

"We are armed with language adequate to describe each leaf of the filed, but not to describe human character."

Thoreau, Henry David on language   

"Our language has wisely sensed the two sides of being alone. It has created the word loneliness to express the pain of being alone. And it has created the word solitude to express the glory of being alone."

Tillich, Paul on language   

"The genius of democracies is seen not only in the great number of new words introduced but even more in the new ideas they express."

Tocqueville, Alexis De on language   

"I wish life was not so short, he thought. languages take such a time, and so do all the things one wants to know about."

Tolkien, J. R. on language   

"Man invented language to satisfy his deep need to complain."

Tomlin, Lily on language   

"Language is the amber in which a thousand precious and subtle thoughts have been safely embedded and preserved. It has arrested ten thousand lightning flashes of genius, which, unless thus fixed and arrested, might have been as bright, but would have also been as quickly passing and perishing, as the lightning."

Trench, Richard Chevenix on language   

"There is no such thing as the Queen's English. The property has gone into the hands of a joint stock company and we own the bulk of the shares!"

Twain, Mark on language   

"How many languages are there in the world? How about 5 billion! Each of us talks, listens, and thinks in his/her own special language that has been shaped by our culture, experiences, profession, personality, mores and attitudes. The chances of us meeting someone else who talks the exact same language is pretty remote."

Unknown, Source on language   

"The universal principle of etymology in all languages: words are carried over from bodies and from the properties of bodies to express the things of the mind and spirit. The order of ideas must follow the order of things."

Vico, Giambattista on language   

"As societies grow decadent, the language grows decadent, too. Words are used to disguise, not to illuminate, action: you liberate a city by destroying it. Words are to confuse, so that at election time people will solemnly vote against their own interests"

Vidal, Gore on language
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"The English language is nobody's special property. It is the property of the imagination: it is the property of the language itself."

Walcott, Derek on language
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"We don't just borrow words; on occasion, English has pursued other languages down alleyways to beat them unconscious and rifle their pockets for new vocabulary."

Washington, Booker T. on language
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"A mind enclosed in language is in prison."

Weil, Simone on language   

"Numbers constitute the only universal language."

West, Nathanael on language   

"The living language is like a cowpath: it is the creation of the cows themselves, who, having created it, follow it or depart from it according to their whims or their needs. From daily use, the path undergoes change. A cow is under no obligation to stay"

White, Elwyn Brooks on language   

"Viewed freely, the English language is the accretion and growth of every dialect, race, and range of time, and is both the free and compacted composition of all."

Whitman, Walt on language   

"We dissect nature along lines laid down by our native language. Language is not simply a reporting device for experience but a defining framework for it."

Whorf, Benjamin Lee on language
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"Language shapes the way we think, and determines what we can think about."

Whorf, Benjamin Lee on language
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"We have really everything in common with America nowadays, except, of course, language."

Wilde, Oscar on language   

"As advertising blather becomes the nation's normal idiom, language becomes printed noise."

Will, George F. on language   

"Poetry is the language of feeling."

Winter, W. on language   

"Language is a part of our organism and no less complicated than it."

Wittgenstein, Ludwig on language   

"If we spoke a different language, we would perceive a somewhat different world."

Wittgenstein, Ludwig on language
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