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Language Quotes

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Language Quotes

“Now I see why reading was illegal for black people during slavery. I discover that I think in words. The more words I know, the more things I can think about. My vocab and thoughts grow together like the stem and petals of a flower. Reading was illegal because if you limit someone's vocab, you limit their thoughts. They can't even think of freedom because they don't have the language to.”

PeopleIfsThinkingKnowsI CanTogetherReadingLanguageGrowsBlackFlowerLimitsSlaveryIllegalBlack PeopleStemPetals
Author:M. K. Asante
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“Rights are not the language of democracy. Compromise is what democracy is about. Rights are the language of freedom, and are absolute because their role is to protect our liberty. By using the absolute power of freedom to accomplish reforms of democracy, we have undermined democracy and diminished our freedom.”

LanguageLibertyRolesDemocracyRightsProtectAbsolutesAccomplishCompromiseReformAbsolute Power
Book:The Death of Common Sense: How Law Is Suffocating America
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“Once you have a handle on loving yourself, you can practice sharing that love with others. You’ve probably been taught to reserve the language of love for when you’re feeling overwhelmingly tender and passionate, and only for those who have made huge commitments to you. We recommend instead learning to recognize and acknowledge all the sweet feelings that make life worthwhile even when they don’t knock you over—and, moreover, learning to communicate those feelings to the people who inspire them.”

PeopleMadeFeelingsLanguagePracticeInspireTaughtSweetHugeCommitmentPassionateCommunicateHandleAcknowledgeWorthwhileReservesLoving YouLoving YourselfLanguage Of Love
Author:Dossie Easton
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“A jargon form'd from the lost language, wit, Confounded in that Babel of the pit; Form'd by diseased conceptions, weak and wild, Sick lust of souls, and an abortive child; Born between whores and fops, by lewd compacts, Before the play, or else between the acts; Nor wonder, if from such polluted minds Should spring such short and transitory kinds.”

IfsShouldMindKindChildrenSoulPlayFormLostLanguageBornWonderSpringWeakSickWitLustConceptionPitsTransitoryJargonDiseasedBabel
Book:The Works of of the Rev. Jonathan Swift
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“The "sayings" of a community, its proverbs, are its characteristic comment upon life; they imply its history, suggest its attitude toward the world and its way of accepting life. Such an idiom makes the finest language any writer can have; and he can never get it with a notebook. He himself must be able to think and feel in that speech - it is a gift from heart to heart.”

ThinkingWorldWayFeelsHeartAbleLanguageCommunityAttitudeAcceptingSpeechCharacteristicsCommentFinestNotebookIdiomHeart To HeartAccepting Life
Book:Not Under Forty
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“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.”

HeartSpiritualLiteratureLanguageNationsMemoriesCommonPiecesUnityCeaseDespitePrintWoeInterventionDeprivedClosingViolationDisturbedCommon LanguageClosing DownSpiritual Unity
Author:Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn
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“Literature is the voice of the age and the state; the character, energy, and resources of the country are reflected and imaged forth in the conceptions of its great minds; they are organs of the time; they speak not their own language, they scarce think their own thoughts; but under an impulse like the prophetic enthusiasm of old, they must feel and utter the sentiments which society inspires.”

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Book:Selections from the Works of Edward Everett: With a Sketch of His Life
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“The old view was that delicacy of language was part of the nature, the sacred nature, of eros and that to speak about it in any other way would be to misunderstand it. What has disappeared is the risk and the hope of human connectedness embedded in eros. Ours is a language that reduces the longing for an other to the need for individual, private satisfaction and safety.”

WayNeedsHumansWould BeIndividualSpeakLanguageViewsRiskSafetySacredLongingSatisfactionEmbeddedDelicacyConnectednessEros
Author:Allan Bloom
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“A dead language is not only one no longer spoken or written, it is unyielding language content to admire its own paralysis. Like statist language, censored and censoring. Ruthless in its policing duties, it has no desire or purpose other than maintaining the free range of its own narcotic narcissism, its own exclusivity and dominance. However moribund, it is not without effect for it actively thwarts the intellect, stalls conscience, suppresses human potential. Unreceptive to interrogation, it cannot form or tolerate new ideas, shape other thoughts, tell another story, fill baffling silences.”

HumansIdeasStoriesFormDesirePurposeLanguageSilenceWrittenEffectsDutyShapesConscienceIntellectAdmireRangeTolerateNarcissismNew IdeasMaintainingRuthlessDominanceParalysisHuman PotentialNarcoticsInterrogationCensoredCensoringUnyieldingExclusivity
Author:Toni Morrison
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“The world of visual perspective is one of unified and homogeneous space. Such a world is alien to the resonating diversity of spoken words. So language was the last art to accept the visual logic of Gutenberg technology, and the first to rebound in the electric age.”

WorldFirstsArtAgeLastsLanguageSpaceAcceptingTechnologyPerspectiveDiversityLogicAliensVisualsElectricUnifiedSpoken WordReboundHomogeneousResonatingGutenberg
Book:The Gutenberg Galaxy: The Making of Typographic Man
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“There rise authors now and then, who seem proof against the mutability of language, because they have rooted themselves in the unchanging principles of human nature. They are like gigantic trees that we sometimes see on the banks of a stream; which, by their vast and deep roots, penetrating through the mere surface, and laying hold on the very foundations of the earth, preserve the soil around them from being swept away by the ever-flowing current, and hold up many a neighboring plant, and perhaps worthless weed, to perpetuity.”

HumansSometimesSeemsEarthLiteratureLanguagePrinciplesTreeHuman NatureRootsFoundationPlantMereCurrentsSurfaceProofPreservesStreamsSoilWeedRootedNow And ThenWorthlessUnchangingSwept AwayDeep RootsMutability
Book:The Sketch Book of Geoffrey Crayon, Gent. – The Complete Collection: The Legend of Sleepy Hollow, Rip Van Winkle, The Voyage, Roscoe, A Royal Poet, A Sunday in London and many more (Illustrated)
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“Language gradually varies, and with it fade away the writings of authors who have flourished their allotted time; otherwise, the creative powers of genius would overstock the world, and the mind would be completely bewildered in the endless mazes of literature.”

WorldWritingMindWould BeLiteratureLanguageCreativeGeniusEndlessFadesVaryFade AwayMazesBewilderedCreative Power
Book:The Complete Works of Washington Irving: Short Stories, Plays, Historical Works, Poetry and Autobiographical Writings (Illustrated): The Entire Opus of the Prolific American Writer, Biographer and Historian, Including The Legend of Sleepy Hollow, Rip Van Winkle, The Sketch Book of Geoffrey Crayon, Bracebridge Hall and many more
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“Geography was not furthered by the achievement, scientific progress was scarcely hastened, and nothing new was discovered. Yet the names of Hillary and Tenzing went instantly into all languages as the names of heroes, partly because they really were men of heroic mold but chiefly because they represented so compellingly the spirit of their time.”

MenSpiritNamesLanguageProgressHeroAchievementHeroicGeographyMoldNothing NewScientific ProgressMt Everest
Author:Edmund Hillary
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“This book reminds me of James Gleick's Chaos. The ideas and stories in Loving and Hating Mathematics are timely, interesting, and sometimes even profound. The authors, writing for nonspecialists, take pains to explain technical ideas in nontechnical language, and the book should interest general readers as well as a large mathematical audience.”

ShouldWritingWellsBookIdeasSometimesStoriesPainHateLanguageInterestInterestingAudienceReaderMathematicsProfoundChaosMathematicalTimely
Author:Steven G. Krantz
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“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.”

PeopleWorldFacesSpeakLanguageCommonMagicGroupsScientistDressesStatementsCommon SenseMagicianBreach
Author:Terry Pratchett
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“When you begin to read a poem you are entering a foreign country whose laws and language and life are a kind of translation of your own; but to accept it because its stews taste exactly like your old mother's hash, or to reject it because the owl-headed goddess of wisdom in its temple is fatter than the Statue of Liberty, is an equal mark of that want of imagination, that inaccessibility to experience, of which each of us who dies a natural death will die.”

WantKindCountryLawMotherDiesLanguageImaginationNaturalLibertyAcceptingLike YouTasteEqualMarkTemplesRejectsGoddessEnteringStatuesTranslationsOwlForeign CountriesStewStatue Of LibertyNatural DeathHash
Author:Randall Jarrell
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“If children had teachers for judgment and eloquence just as they have for languages, if their memory was exercised less than their energy or their natural genius, if instead of deadening their vivacity of mind we tried to elevate the free scope and impulse of their souls, what might not result from a fine disposition? As it is, we forget that courage, or love of truth and glory are the virtues that matter most in youth; and our one endeavour is to subdue our children's spirits, in order to teach them that dependence and suppleness are the first laws of success in life.”

IfsMindFirstsChildrenSoulMatterMightLawSpiritOrderEnergyLanguageNaturalMemoriesForgetResultsTeachVirtueTeacherYouthFineGeniusJudgmentGloryOur ChildrenImpulseSuccess In LifeDependenceDispositionScopeEloquenceEndeavourVivacity
Author:Luc de Clapiers
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