Home / Topics / Common Quotes

Common Quotes

Browse 6954 quotes about Common.

Common Quotes

“The benefits of science are not only material ones. The truths that science teaches are of common interest the world over. The language of science is universal, and is a powerful force in bringing the peoples of the world closer together.”

World Together Language Force Interest Powerful Common Teach Materials Benefits Universal Common Interests

Book:The cosmos of Arthur Holly Compton

Source: The cosmos of Arthur Holly Compton

“Science starts with preconception, with the common culture, and with common sense. It moves on to observation, is marked by the discovery of paradox, and is then concerned with the correction of preconception. It moves then to use these corrections for the designing of further observation and for more refined experiment. And as it moves along this course the nature of the evidence and experience that nourish it becomes more and more unfamiliar; it is not just the language that is strange [to common culture].”

“So far as the advocates of a constructed international language are concerned, it is rather to be wondered at how much in common their proposals actually have, both in vocabulary and in general spirit of procedure.”

Spirit Language Common Concerned International Vocabulary Proposal Procedures International Language

Book:General Linguistics

Source: General Linguistics

“A common language is a first step towards communication across cultural boundaries.”

Firsts Language Common Steps Communication Boundaries First Steps Common Language

Author:Ethan Zuckerman

“If you're talking about Java in particular, Python is about the best fit you can get amongst all the other languages. Yet the funny thing is, from a language point of view, JavaScript has a lot in common with Python, but it is sort of a restricted subset.”

Ifs Language Views Common Talking Particular Fit Point Of View Funny Things Java Python Javascript

Author:Guido van Rossum

“Ideas do not respect national frontiers, and this is especially so where language and other traditions are in common.”

Ideas Language Common Tradition Frontiers

Book:The affluent society

Source: The affluent society

“Woe to that nation whose literature is disturbed by the intervention of power. Because that is not just a violation against "freedom of print," it is the closing down of the heart of the nation, a slashing to pieces of its memory. The nation ceases to be mindful of itself, it is deprived of its spiritual unity, and despite a supposedly common language, compatriots suddenly cease to understand one another.”

“Magicians and scientists are, on the face of it, poles apart. Certainly, a group of people who often dress strangely, live in a world of their own, speak a specialized language and frequently make statements that appear to be in flagrant breach of common sense have nothing in common with a group of people who often dress strangely, speak a specialized language, live in ... er.”

People World Faces Speak Language Common Magic Groups Scientist Dresses Statements Common Sense Magician Breach

Author:Terry Pratchett

“What joins the Americans one to another is not a common ancestry, language or race, but a shared work of the imagination that looks forward to the making of a future, not backward to the insignia of the past. Their enterprise is underwritten by a Constitution that allows for the widest horizons of sight and the broadest range of expression, supports the liberties of the people as opposed to the ambitions of the state, and stands as premise for a narrative rather than plan for an invasion or a monument. The narrative was always plural; not one story, many stories.”

“Our culture is like a garment that does not fit us, or in any case no longer fits us. This culture is like a dead language that no longer has anything in common with the language of the street. It is increasingly alien to our lives.”

Doe Culture Language Common Cases Our Lives Streets Fit Aliens Garments

Author:Jean Dubuffet

“If there are some who talk the same language as myself, then why should I neglect their interests for the sake of some other group of people who are alien and remote? They have their own 'gods and idols' and we have nothing in common. ... If you try to please audiences, uncritically accepting their tastes, it can only mean that you have no respect for them: that you simply want to collect their money.”

People Ifs Want Should Trying Mean Language Interest Common Accepting Audience Groups Please Taste Sake Aliens Neglect Idols Should I No Respect

Author:Andrei Tarkovsky

“Art is universal. It unites mankind in common brotherhood. As a missionary of civilization, its message is both to heart and mind. Distinctions of tongue or boundary lines disappear before the power of truths, which, like the rainbow, charm by the beauty of variegated hues, or, combined with light, illuminate the universe. Moreover, art is the connecting link in the chain of great minds. Through its language, thought appeals to thought, and sympathy echoes feeling.”

Source: Art-hints: Architecture, Sculpture and Painting

“I do think students in public school (and private) should be required to study the Bible. [...] As a matter of pure education, it's shocking that we [the americans] are not compelled to learn the book, which is the source of our language, our common stories, our political structure, our conflicts.”

Thinking Should Book Matter Stories School Political Language Common Study Students Source Pure Conflict Structure Shocking Compelled Public School

Author:David Plotz

“The common fluency of speech in many men, and most women, is owing to a scarcity of matter and a scarcity of words; for whosoever is a master of language, and hath a mind full of ideas, will be apt, in speaking, to hesitate upon the choice of both.”

Men Mind Ideas Matter Choices Language Common Talking Masters Speech Scarcity Owing Fluency

Author:Jonathan Swift

“No one sleeps in this room without the dream of a common language.”

Dream Language Sleep Rooms Common Common Language

Book:The Dream of a Common Language: Poems 1974-1977

Source: The Dream of a Common Language: Poems 1974-1977

“French was the only language we had in common, and even that was like a dialect we had picked up at a rummage sale, rusty and missing a lot of essential parts.”

Language Common Missing Essentials Dialect Rummage Sales

Author:Patricia Hampl

“You don't have to have a language in common with someone for a sexual rapport. But it helps if the language you don't understand is Italian.”

Ifs Helping Language Common Italian Rapport

Author:Madonna Ciccone

“One demands two things of a poem. Firstly, it must be a well-made verbal object that does honor to the language in which it is written. Secondly, it must say something significant about a reality common to us all, but perceived from a unique perspective. What the poet says has never been said before, but, once he has said it, his readers recognize its validity for themselves.”

Wells Doe Made Said Two Reality Language Common Written Objects Poet Perspective Reader Honor Demand Unique Significant Two Things Validity Poetry By Famous Poets Unique Perspective

Author:W. H. Auden

“If we lived in a democratic state our language would have to hurtle, fly, curse, and sing, in all the common American names, all the undeniable and representative and participating voices of everybody here.”

Ifs States Names Language Voice Common Democracy Diversity Democratic Curse Representatives Participating Cultural Diversity

Book:Some of Us Did Not Die: New and Selected Essays

Source: Some of Us Did Not Die: New and Selected Essays

“I am intrigued with the shapes people choose as their symbols to create a language. There is within all forms a basic structure, an indication of the entire object with a minimum of lines that becomes a symbol. This is common to all languages, all people, all times.”

People Form Language Lines Common Objects Shapes Structure All Time Symbols Minimum Indication Intrigued

Book:Keith Haring Journals: (Penguin Classics Deluxe Edition)

Source: Keith Haring Journals: (Penguin Classics Deluxe Edition)

“Linguistically, and hence conceptually, the things in sharpest focus are the things that are public enough to be talked of publicly, common and conspicuous enough to be talked of often, and near enough to sense to be quickly identified and learned by name; it is to these that words apply first and foremost.”

Firsts Enough Names Language Common Focus

Book:Word and Object

Source: Word and Object

“The strategy of semantic ascent is that it carries the discussion into a domain where both parties are better agreed on the objects (viz., words) and on the main terms connecting them. Words, or their inscriptions, unlike points, miles, classes and the rest, are tangible objects of the size so popular in the marketplace, where men of unlike conceptual schemes communicate at their best. The strategy is one of ascending to a common part of two fundamentally disparate conceptual schemes, the better to discuss the disparate foundations. No wonder it helps in philosophy.”

“But the more these conscious illusions of the ruling class are shown to be false and the less they satisfy common sense, the more dogmatically they are asserted and the more deceitful, moralizing and spiritual becomes the language of established society.”

Spiritual Language Common Class Illusion Conscious Common Sense Ruling Deceitful Moralizing

Author:Karl Marx

“Art as language....in the future there will only be art. This common language will carry the message of love.”

Art Language Common Messages Common Language

Author:Theo van Doesburg

“I am not of the opinion generally entertained in this country [England], that man lives by Greek and Latin alone; that is, by knowing a great many words of two dead languages, which nobody living knows perfectly, and which are of no use in the common intercourse of life. Useful knowledge, in my opinion, consists of modern languages, history, and geography; some Latin may be thrown into the bargain, in compliance with custom, and for closet amusement.”

“This is practically the language used to fallen women, and chiefly by their own sex: "God may forgive you, but we never can!" - a declaration which, however common, in spirit if not in substance, is, when one comes to analyse it, unparalleled in its arrogance of blasphemy. That for a single offence, however grave, a whole life should be blasted, is a doctrine repugnant even to Nature's own dealings in the visible world.”

Ifs World Should May Whole Used Spirit Language Sex Common Forgiving Whole Life Graves Doctrine Substance Fallen Arrogance Visible Declaration Blasphemy Offence Dealings

Author:Dinah Maria Murlock Craik

“Faction is the greatest evil and the most common danger. "Faction" is the conventional English translation of the Greek stasis, one of the most remarkable words to be found in any language.”

Evil Found Language Common Danger Greek Remarkable Conventional Translations Factions Stasis

Author:Moses Finley

“All fear of 'offensive' speech is bourgeois and reactionary. Historically, profane or bawdy language was common in both the upper and the lower classes, who lived together in rural areas amid the untidy facts of nature. Notions of propriety and decorum come to the fore in urbanized periods ruled by an expanding middle class, which is obsessed with cleanliness, respectability, and conformism.”

“In scientific matters there was a common language and one standard of values; in moral and political problems there were many. … Furthermore, in science there is a court of last resort, experiment, which is unavailable in human affairs.”

Humans Matter Problem Lasts Political Values Language Common Moral Standards Court Affair Experiments Resorts Atomic Bomb Common Language

Author:Emilio G. Segre

“Beyond the formative effects of reading on the individuals composing society, the fact that they have read the same books gives them experiences and ideas in common. These constitute a kind of shorthand of ideas which helps make communication quicker and more efficient. That is what we mean when we say figuratively of another person, We speak the same language.”

Giving Kind Mean Persons Book Ideas Facts Helping Reading Individual Speak Language Common Effects Communication Efficient Composing Shorthand

Author:Charles Scribner IV

“I use the [vulgar] words because apparently these words do not corrupt morally. I'm from the street in New York, hung around in a tough neighborhood. It was common to curse, you make your point. It's a very effective language. I try not to overdo it. It's never to shock. I know where it fits, it's never to shock. There's no shock value left in words.”

Knows Trying Use Values Left Language Common Streets New York Fit Tough Curse Shock Neighborhood Hung Vulgar Shock Value

Author:George Carlin

“You, my Brown Guard, will regard it as a matter of course that this German people should go only by the way which Providence ordained for it when it gave to Germans the common language. So we go forward with the profoundest faith in God into the future. Would that which we have achieved have been possible if Providence had not helped us?”

People Ifs Way Should Has Beens Matter Courses Language Common Atheism Regard Brown Faith In God Providence Common Language

Book:The Speeches of Adolf Hitler, April 1922-August 1939: An English Translation of Representative Passages Arranged Under Subjects and Edited by Norman H. Baynes

Source: The Speeches of Adolf Hitler, April 1922-August 1939: An English Translation of Representative Passages Arranged Under Subjects and Edited by Norman H. Baynes

“There have been many definitions of hell, but for the English the best definition is that it is the place where the Germans are the police, the Swedish are the comedians, the Italians are the defense force, Frenchmen dig the roads, the Belgians are the pop singers, the Spanish run the railways, the Turks cook the food, the Irish are the waiters, the Greeks run the government, and the common language is Dutch.”

Has Beens Government Running Language Force Common Hell Police Definitions Pops Defense Singers Cooks Comedian Greek Sarcastic Dutch Waiter Railway Swedish Frenchmen Common Language Belgians

Author:David Frost

“But the idols of the Market Place are the most troublesome of all: idols which have crept into the understanding through their alliances with words and names. For men believe that their reason governs words. But words turn and twist the understanding. This it is that has rendered philosophy and the sciences inactive. Words are mostly cut to the common fashion and draw the distinctions which are most obvious to the common understanding. Whenever an understanding of greater acuteness or more diligent observation would alter those lines to suit the true distinctions of nature, words complain.”

“I believe there is no liturgy in the world, either in ancient or modern language, which breathes more of a solid, scriptural, rational piety, than the Common Prayer of the Church of England. And though the main of it was compiled considerably more than two hundred years ago, yet is the language of it, not only pure, but strong and elegant in the highest degree.”

Source: John Wesley's The Book of Common Prayer

“There are three things without which there is no country--common language, common judicature, and co-tillage land--for without these a country cannot support itself in peace and social union.”

Country Three Language Social Common Support Land Unions Three Things Common Language

Book:Literary and Historical Essays

Source: Literary and Historical Essays

“Our common language is English. And our common task is to ensure that our non-English-speaking children learn this common language.”

Children Political Language Common Tasks Common Language English Speaking

Book:The De-valuing of America: The Fight for Our Culture and Our Children

Source: The De-valuing of America: The Fight for Our Culture and Our Children

“We should constantly use the most common, little, easy words which our language affords.”

Should Littles Use Language Easy Common

Author:John Wesley