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Quote by Charlton Laird

“Man can be defined, if one wishes, as a languag-ized mammal.”

Quote by Charlton Laird

Author

Charlton Laird (1901-1984) was a British novelist known for his distinctive literary style and profound insights into human nature. His works are typically set against the backdrop of social realism and explore themes such as class, gender, and power. more

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“Amoebas, once they have themselves well pulled in two, go their ways-they practice divorce, but no remarriage.”

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“Grammar is not a set of rules; it is something inherent in the language, and language cannot exist without it. It can be discovered, but not invented.”

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“Quite naturally, scholars assumed that Latin grammar was not merely Latin grammar, but that it was grammar itself. They borrowed it and made the most of it.”

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“The truth seems to be that they [teachers of grammar] were victims of a mighty hoax, one of those true belly-rumbling impostures which a workaday world can but seldom afford.”

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“Language is a living thing. It must survive in men's minds and on their tongues if it survives at all.”

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“You and I who read and write books have very little effect upon language. We may think about it, write about it, and read about it, but it goes on without us, or in spite of us.”

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“Babies and language are the essential ingredients of civilization, and speakers of language no more know where it came from than babies know where they come from.”

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“The great arbiters of language are the women who speak it in the presence of children... What the women pass on to the next generation is "right" and what they do not bother to pass on to their children sooner or later becomes "wrong.”

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“Jazz was formerly a crude term for indulging in an action which in polite society is referred to, if at all, only with such vague Latin terms as intercourse and cohabitation.”

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