LANGUAGE QUOTES VI

quotations about language

Language is not a wonderful natural asset; it is an artificial device that constantly misleads us and does us great harm; and the modern way of studying language is itself harmful because it enhances the reputation of language and sustains corrupt ways of thought.

AMOREY GETHIN

introduction, Language and Thought: A Rational Enquiry Into Their Nature and Relationship


Language is the dress of thought.

SAMUEL JOHNSON

Lives of the English Poets

Tags: Samuel Johnson


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


Language was not given to man: he seized it.

LOUIS ARAGON

Le Libertinage

Tags: Louis Aragon


There's no such thing as dead languages, only dormant minds.

CARLOS RUIZ ZAFON

The Shadow of the Wind

Tags: Carlos Ruiz Zafon


Language is the picture and counterpart of thought.

MARK HOPKINS

address at dedication of Williston Seminary, Dec. 1, 1841


To clothe low-creeping matter with high-flown language is not fine fancy but flat foolery; it rather loads than raises a wren, to fasten the feathers of an ostrich to her wings.

THOMAS FULLER

The Holy State and the Profane State

Tags: Thomas Fuller


For millions of years, mankind lived just like the animals. Then something happened which unleashed the power of our imagination. We learned to talk and we learned to listen. Speech has allowed the communication of ideas, enabling human beings to work together to build the impossible. Mankind's greatest achievements have come about by talking, and its greatest failures by not talking. It doesn't have to be like this. Our greatest hopes could become reality in the future. With the technology at our disposal, the possibilities are unbounded. All we need to do is make sure we keep talking.

STEPHEN HAWKING

British Telecom advertisement, 1993

Tags: Stephen Hawking


Articulate words are a harsh clamor and dissonance. When man arrives at his highest perfection, he will again be dumb! for I suppose he was dumb at the Creation, and must go round an entire circle in order to return to that blessed state.

NATHANIEL HAWTHORNE

American Note-Books, Apr. 1841

Tags: Nathaniel Hawthorne


It is a silly conceit, that men without languages are often without understanding; it is apparent in all ages, that some such have been even prodigies for ability; for it is not to be believed that wisdom speaks only to her disciples in Latin, Greek, and Hebrew.

THOMAS FULLER

attributed, Day's Collacon

Tags: Thomas Fuller


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


Language is a window to the world.

SUSANNA ZARAYSKY

Language Is Music: Over 100 Fun & Easy Tips to Learn Foreign Languages


Vague expression permits the hearer to imagine whatever suits him and what he already thinks in any case.

THEODOR W. ADORNO

Minima Moralia

Tags: Theodor Wiesengrund Adorno


The world is not real for me until it has been pushed through the mesh of language.

JOHN BANVILLE

The Paris Review, spring 2009

Tags: John Banville


In the last century researchers and pedagogues viewed children learning a second language as an impediment to learning. The resultant pedagogical philosophy delayed the introduction of "foreign" languages to the high school years, just in time for the real impediment to focused learning -- adolescence.

JAY KUTEN

"Language is food for the brain", Wanganui Chronicle, March 16, 2016


It is curious that some learned dunces, because they can write nonsense in languages that are dead, should despise those that talk sense in languages that are living.

CHARLES CALEB COLTON

Lacon: Or, Many Things in Few Words

Tags: Charles Caleb Colton


Languages are the key or entry to the sciences and nothing more; contempt for the one redounds on the other. The question is not whether the languages be ancient of modern, dead or living; but whether they be rude or polished, whether the books found in them show a good or a bad taste.

BRUYERE

attributed, Day's Collacon


Language evolves and moves on. It is an organic thing. It is not stuck in an ivory tower, hung with expensive works of art.

E. L. JAMES

Fifty Shades of Grey

Tags: E. L. James


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 fixed and arrested might have been as bright, but would have also been as quickly passing and perishing as the lightning.

RICHARD CHENEVIX TRENCH

On the Study of Words


Language is not a handmaiden to perception; it is perception; it gives shape to what would otherwise be inert and dead.

STANLEY FISH

How to Write a Sentence