LANGUAGE QUOTES V

quotations about language

In general the languages of most unpolished people have a great force and energy of expression; and this is but natural. Uncultivated people are but ordinary observers of things, and not critical in distinguishing them; but, for that reason, they admire more, and are more affected with what they see, and therefore express themselves in a warmer and more passionate manner.

EDMUND BURKE

Philosophical Enquiry Into the Origin of Our Ideas of the Sublime and Beautiful

Tags: Edmund Burke


If thought corrupts language, language can also corrupt thought.

GEORGE ORWELL

1984

Tags: George Orwell


Since individuals think in the language in which they speak, thought processes are limited to words and concepts within that language. If a word for a concept doesn't exist in that language, it cannot be thought. Because language is the cornerstone of thinking and culture, as the languages around the world die out, ways of thinking become restricted.

JORDAN RYDER

"Native American Student Association to Stage Screening of Language Loss Documentary", Daily Iowan, March 29, 2016


Language is easy for us to learn and use because language, like a living organism, has evolved in a symbiotic relationship with humans. Language has adapted to what our brains can do, rather than the other way around.

LINDA B. GLASER

"New book reintegrates the science of language", Cornell Chronicle, April 4, 2016


If the reason you are having your child learn a foreign language is so that they can communicate with someone in a different language twenty years from now -- well, the relative value of that is changed, surely, by the fact that everyone is going to be walking around with live-translation apps.

MAX VENTILLA

"Learn Different: Silicon Valley disrupts education", The New Yorker, March 7, 2016


In language, the ignorant have prescribed laws to the learned.

RICHARD DUPPA

Maxims


The language denotes the man. A coarse or refined character finds its expression naturally in a coarse or refined phraseology.

CHRISTIAN NESTELL BOVEE

Intuitions and Summaries of Thought

Tags: Christian Nestell Bovee


If the English language made any sense, a catastrophe would be an apostrophe with fur.

DOUG LARSON

attributed, If Ignorance Is Bliss, Why Aren't There More Happy People?

Tags: Doug Larson


A country without a language is a country without a soul.

ELIZABETH GREIWE

"The luck of the Irish language student", Chicago Tribune, March 16, 2016


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

GEORGE ORWELL

The English People


Language, which is the uniting bond and very medium of communion between men, is at the same time by the great variety of tongues, the means of severing and estranging nations more than anything else.

HORACE SMITH

The Tin Trumpet: Or, Heads and Tails, for the Wise and Waggish


Language is my whore, my mistress, my wife, my pen-friend, my check-out girl. Language is a complimentary moist lemon-scented cleansing square or handy freshen-up wipette. Language is the breath of God, the dew on a fresh apple, it's the soft rain of dust that falls into a shaft of morning sun when you pull from an old bookshelf a forgotten volume of erotic diaries; language is the faint scent of urine on a pair of boxer shorts, it's a half-remembered childhood birthday party, a creak on the stair, a spluttering match held to a frosted pane, the warm wet, trusting touch of a leaking nappy, the hulk of a charred Panzer, the underside of a granite boulder, the first downy growth on the upper lip of a Mediterranean girl, cobwebs long since overrun by an old Wellington boot.

STEPHEN FRY

A Bit of Fry and Laurie


Wouldn't it be wonderful to travel to a foreign country without having to worry about the nuisance of communicating in a different language?... Within a decade or so, we'll be able to communicate with one another via small earpieces with built-in microphones. No more trying to remember your high school French when checking into a hotel in Paris. Your earpiece will automatically translate "Good evening, I have a reservation" to Bon soir, j'ai une réservation -- while immediately translating the receptionist's unintelligible babble to "I am sorry, Sir, but your credit card has been declined."

DAVID ARBESÚ

"Could the language barrier actually fall within the next 10 years?", The Conversation, March 28, 2016


Evolution teaches us the original purpose of language was to ritualize men's threats and curses, his spells to compel the gods; communication came later.

GENE WOLFE

"The Death of Doctor Island", Universe 3

Tags: Gene Wolfe


I have been a believer in the magic of language since, at a very early age, I discovered that some words got me into trouble and others got me out.

KATHERINE DUNN

attributed, Contemporary Authors New Revision Series


In Paris they just simply opened their eyes and stared when we spoke to them in French! We never did succeed in making those idiots understand their own language.

MARK TWAIN

Innocents Abroad

Tags: Mark Twain


Language is an art, and a glorious one, whose influence extends over all others, and in which all science whatever must center; but an art springing from necessity, and originally invented by artless men.

J. H. TOOKE

attributed, Day's Collacon


Language was invented for one reason, boys -- to woo women.

N. H. KLEINBAUM

Dead Poets Society


Language is originally and essentially nothing but a system of signs or symbols, which denote real occurrences, or their echo in the human soul.

CARL JUNG

Psychology of the Unconscious

Tags: Carl Jung


It is as though the ancestors who made language and knew from what bestiality its use rescued them are saying to us: Beware of interfering with its purpose! For when language is seriously interfered with, when it is disjoined from truth, be it from mere incompetence or worse, from malice, horrors can descend again on mankind.

CHINUA ACHEBE

Hopes and Impediments: Selected Essays

Tags: Chinua Achebe