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Language Quotes

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Language Quotes

“People only speak to get something. If I say, Let me tell you a few things about myself, already your defenses go up; you go, Look, I wonder what he wants from me, because no one ever speaks except to obtain an objective. That's the only reason anyone ever opens their mouth, onstage or offstage. They may use a language that seems revealing, but if so, it's just coincidence, because what they're trying to do is accomplish an objective.”

PeopleIfsWantTryingLooksMayReasonUseSeemsSpeakLanguageWonderMouthsLet MeAccomplishDefenseObjectivesCoincidenceRevealing
Author:David Mamet
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“Physics is to be regarded not so much as the study of something a priori given, but rather as the development of methods of ordering and surveying human experience. In this respect our task must be to account for such experience in a manner independent of individual subjective judgement and therefore objective in the sense that it can be unambiguously communicated in ordinary human language.”

HumansIndividualLanguageGivenStudyDevelopmentOrdinaryTasksAccountsIndependentMethodPhysicsObjectivesJudgementHuman ExperienceSubjectiveHuman Language
Book:Collected Works
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“Persecution always says, 'I know the consequences of your opinion better than you know them yourselves.' But the language of toleration was always amicable, liberal, and just: it confessed its doubts, and acknowledged its ignorance ... Persecution had always reasoned from cause to effect, from opinion to action, [that such an opinion would invariably lead to but one action], which proved generally erroneous; while toleration led us invariably to form just conclusions, by judging from actions and not from opinions.”

KnowsActionFormLanguageCausesOpinionDoubtEffectsIgnoranceJudgingConsequenceConclusionPersecutionBetter Than YouToleration
Author:Charles James Fox
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“I have the highest veneration of those Gentleman, -- but, Sir, give me leave to demand, what right had they to say, We, the People? My political curiosity, exclusive of my anxious solicitude for the public welfare, leads me to ask who authorized them to speak the language of, We, the People, instead of We, the States? States are the characteristics, and the soul of the confederation. If the States be not the agents of this compact, it must be one of great consolidated National Government of the people of all the States.”

PeopleIfsGivingSoulStatesGovernmentPoliticalAsksSpeakLanguageDemandHighestConstitutionGive MeCuriosityAgentsWelfareGentlemanCharacteristicsAnxiousSovereigntyExclusiveLeading MeCompactVenerationSolicitudeConfederationPublic Welfare
Author:Patrick Henry
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“No one really knew the sciences except the Lord Robert, Bishop of Lincoln, by reason of his length of life and experience, as well as of his studiousness and zeal. He knew mathematics and perspective, and there was nothing which he was unable to know; and at the same time he was sufficiently acquainted with languages to be able to understand the saints and the philosophers and the wise men of antiquity but his knowledge of languages was not such as to enable him to effect translations until the latter portion of his life.”

KnowsMenWellsReasonAbleLanguageLordWiseEffectsPerspectiveMathematicsSaintPhilosopherLatterLengthPortionsTranslationsZealBishopsAntiquityLength Of Life
Author:Roger Bacon
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“I have declared again and again that if I say Aryans, I mean neither blood nor bones, nor hair nor skull; I mean simply those who speak an Aryan language. In that sense, and in that sense only, do I say that even the blackest Hindus represent an earlier stage of Aryan speech and thought than the fairest Scandinavians. To me an ethnologist who speaks of Aryan race, Aryan blood, Aryan eyes and hair, is as great a sinner as a linguist who speaks of a dolichocephalic dictionary or a brachycephalic grammar.”

IfsMeanEyeSpeakLanguageRaceBloodStageHairSpeechBonesSinnerAgain And AgainGrammarDictionarySkullsLinguistsScandinavians
Author:Max Muller
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“The metaphysical apologia at least betrayed the injustice of the established order through the incongruence of concept and reality. The impartiality of scientific language deprived what was powerless of the strength to make itself heard and merely provided the existing order with a neutral sign for itself. Such neutrality is more metaphysical than metaphysics.”

RealityOrderLanguageHeardConceptsInjusticeMetaphysicsMetaphysicalPowerlessBetrayedDeprivedNeutralityImpartiality
Book:Dialectic of Enlightenment
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“Von Neumann languages do not have useful properties for reasoning about programs. Axiomatic and denotational semantics are precise tools for describing and understanding conventional programs, but they only talk about them and cannot alter their ungainly properties. Unlike von Neumann languages, the language of ordinary algebra is suitable both for stating its laws and for transforming an equation into its solution, all within the "language."”

LawLanguageUnderstandingSolutionsOrdinaryProgramToolsPropertyReasoningConventionalPreciseEquationsTransformingDescribingSuitableAlgebraSemanticsVon Neumann
Author:John Backus
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“I believe that we can still have a genre of scientific books suitable for and accessible alike to professionals and interested laypeople. The concepts of science, in all their richness and ambiguity, can be presented without any compromise, without any simplification counting as distortion, in language accessible to all intelligent people. I hope that this book can be read with profit both in seminars for graduate students and if the movie stinks and you forgot your sleeping pills on the businessman's special to Tokyo.”

PeopleIfsBelieveStillsBookLanguageI BelieveSleepSpecialStudentsConceptsIntelligentProfitCompromiseGenreGraduatesBusinessmanPillsCountingRichnessAmbiguitySuitableDistortionStinkSimplificationTokyoGraduate StudentsSeminarsSleeping Pills
Author:Stephen Jay Gould
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“Most English speakers do not have the writer's short fuse about seeing or hearing their language brutalized. This is the main reason, I suspect, that English is becoming the world's universal tongue: English-speaking natives don't care how badly others speak English as long as they speak it. French, once considered likely to become the world's lingua franca, has lost popularity because those who are born speaking it reject this liberal attitude and become depressed, insulted or insufferable when their language is ill used.”

WorldLongReasonCareUsedLostSpeakLanguageBornAttitudeSeeingBecomingUniversalIllDon't CareHearingTongueRejectsSuspectsSpeakersPopularityInsultedFuseSpeak EnglishInsufferableEnglish Speaking
Book:There's a Country in My Cellar
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“Speech, originally, was the device whereby Man learned, imperfectly, to transmit the thoughts and emotions of his mind. By setting up arbitrary sounds and combinations of sounds to represent certain mental nuances, he developed a method of communication--but one which in its clumsiness and thick-thumbed inadequacy degenerated all the delicacy of the mind into gross and guttural signaling.”

MenMindCertainLanguageSoundEmotionCommunicationSpeechMethodSettingSettingsCombinationDevicesThickGrossArbitraryNuanceTransmitDelicacyInadequacyThoughts And EmotionsClumsiness
Book:Foundation Trilogy
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“The aim of the book is to set a limit to thought, or rather - not to thought, but to the expression of thoughts: for in order to be able to set a limit to thought, we should have to find both sides of the limit thinkable (i.e. we should have to be able to think what cannot be thought). It will therefore only be in language that the limit can be set, and what lies on the other side of the limit will simply be nonsense.”

ThinkingShouldBookAbleLyingOrderLanguageSidesExpressionLimitsShould HaveAimNonsenseBoth SidesThinkable
Book:Wittgenstein's Tractatus
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“How truly language must be regarded as a hindrance to thought, though the necessary instrument of it, we shall clearly perceive on remembering the comparative force with which simple ideas are communicated by signs. To say, "Leave the room," is less expressive than to point to the door. Place a finger on the lips is more forcible than whispering, "Do not speak." A beck of the hand is better than, "Come here." No phrase can convey the idea of surprise so vividly as opening the eyes and raising the eyebrows. A shrug of the shoulders would lose much by translation into words.”

IdeasHandsEyeRememberSpeakLanguageForceLosesSimpleRoomsDoorsInstrumentsSurpriseFingersLipsShouldersOpeningPerceivePhrasesTranslationsEyebrowsWhisperingExpressiveHindranceSimple Ideas
Book:Essays: Moral, Political and Aesthetic
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“You had to form for yourself a lucid language for the world, to overcome the battering of experience, to replace everyday life's pain and harshness and wretched dreariness with - no not with certainty but with an ignorance you could live with. Deep ignorance, but still a kind that knew its limits. The limits were crucial.”

WorldKindStillsPainFormLanguageIgnoranceLimitsOvercomingEverydayCertaintyCrucialEveryday LifeWretchedHarshnessBattering
Author:Gregory Benford
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“Economic analysis is the first principle of Marxism. Professors who were genuine leftists would have challenged the entire economics-driven machinery of American academe the wasteful multidepartmental structure, the divisive pedantry of overspecialization, the cronyism and sycophancy in recruitment and promotion, the boondoggling ostentation of pointless conferences, the exploitation of graduate students and part-time teachers, the subservience of faculty to overpaid administrators, the mediocrity and folly of the ruling cliques of the Modern Language Association.”

FirstsLanguagePrinciplesTeacherEconomicModernStudentsEconomicsStructureDrivenGenuineAnalysisFollyFacultyProfessorsMediocrityAssociationGraduatesExploitationRulingConferencesMachineryPromotionMarxismPointlessLeftistsAdministratorsPart TimeCliqueRecruitmentGraduate StudentsPedantryOstentationSubservienceCronyismModern Languages
Book:Vamps & Tramps: New Essays
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“Wikipedia is first and foremost an effort to create and distribute a free encyclopedia of the highest possible quality to every single person on the planet in their own language. Asking whether the community comes before or after this goal is really asking the wrong question: the entire purpose of the community is precisely this goal.”

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Author:Jimmy Wales
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“God has come again and again in various Forms, has spoken again and again in different words and different languages the Same One Truth - but how many are there that live up to it? Instead of making Truth the vitalbreath of his life, man compromises by making over and over againa mechanical religion of it - a handy staff to lean on in times of adversity, a soothing balm for his conscience or a tradition to be followed.”

MenDifferentFormLanguageConscienceTraditionAdversityVariousCompromiseAgain And AgainStaffSoothingHandyDifferent LanguagesTimes Of Adversity
Author:Meher Baba
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“But all this language gotten, and augmented by Adam and his posterity, was again lost at the tower of Babel , when by the hand of God, every man was stricken for his rebellion, with an oblivion of his former language.”

MenHandsLostLanguageEvery ManFormerRebellionAdamTowersOblivionPosterityHands Of GodBabelTower Of Babel
Book:The Moral and Political Works To which is Prefixed the Autors Life, Extracted from that Said to be Written by Himself ... Illustr. by the Ed. - London 1750
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“He that is to govern a whole Nation , must read in himself, not this, or that particular man; but Mankind; which though it be hard to do, harder than to learn any Language, or Science; yet, when I shall have set down my own reading orderly, and perspicuously, the pains left another, will be only to consider, if he also find not the same in himself. For this kind of Doctrine, admitteth no other Demonstration.”

IfsMenKindHardWholePainReadingLeftLanguageNationsMy OwnMankindParticularHarderDoctrineDemonstrationOrderly
Book:Leviathan - Revised Edition
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