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Language Quotes

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Language Quotes

“The mastery of one's phonemes may be compared to the violinist's mastery of fingering. The violin string lends itself to a continuous gradation of tones, but the musician learns the discrete intervals at which to stop the string in order to play the conventional notes. We sound our phonemes like poor violinists, approximating each time to a fancied norm, and we receive our neighbor's renderings indulgently, mentally rectifying the more glaring inaccuracies.”

MayPlayOrderLanguageSoundPoorMusicMusicianNotesNeighborToneStringsMasteryConventionalNormViolinIntervalsRenderingViolinistDiscrete
Author:Willard Van Orman Quine
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“We find that the child who does not yet have language at his command, the child under two and a half, will be able to cooperate with our education if we go easy on the "blocking" techniques, the outright prohibitions, the "no's" and go heavy on "substitution" techniques, that is, the redirection or certain impulses and the offering of substitute satisfactions.”

IfsChildrenDoeTwoAbleCertainLanguageEasyHalfDisciplineSatisfactionHeavyTechniqueCommandBlockImpulseSubstitutesOfferingProhibitionSubstitutionRedirection
Author:Selma Fraiberg
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“We have good reason to believe that memories of early childhood do not persist in consciousness because of the absence or fragmentary character of language covering this period. Words serve as fixatives for mental images. . . . Even at the end of the second year of life when word tags exist for a number of objects in the child's life, these words are discrete and do not yet bind together the parts of an experience or organize them in a way that can produce a coherent memory.”

WayYearsBelieveChildrenEndsReasonCharacterTogetherLanguageMemoriesNumbersConsciousnessChildhoodObjectsProducePeriodsAbsencePersistOrganizeCoveringTagEarly ChildhoodYears Of LifeDiscrete
Book:The Magic Years: Understanding and Handling the Problems of Early Childhood
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“Language makes it possible for a child to incorporate his parents' verbal prohibitions, to make them part of himself....We don't speak of a conscience yet in the child who is just acquiring language, but we can see very clearly how language plays an indispensable role in the formation of conscience. In fact, the moral achievement of man, the whole complex of factors that go into the organization of conscience is very largely based upon language.”

MenChildrenPlayWholeFactsSpeakLanguageParentMoralRolesAchievementConscienceOrganizationComplexesFactorsIndispensableFormationProhibition
Author:Selma Fraiberg
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“That so many writers have been prepared to accept a kind of martyrdom is the best tribute that flesh can pay to the living spirit of man as expressed in his literature. One cannot doubt that the martyrdom will continue to be gladly embraced. To some of us, the wresting of beauty out of language is the only thing in the world that matters.”

MenWorldKindHas BeensMatterSpiritLiteratureLanguagePayAcceptingDoubtPreparedFleshTributeMartyrdom
Author:Anthony Burgess
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“At each stage of development the child needs different resources from the family. During the first year, a variety of experience and the availability of the parents for attachment are primary. During the second and third years, stimulation of language development is critical. During the years prior to school entrance, information that persuades children they are loved becomes critical, and during the school years it is important for children to believe that they can succeed at the tasks they want to master.”

WantNeedsYearsFirstsBelieveChildrenImportantDifferentSchoolLanguageParentStageInformationMastersDevelopmentSucceedResourcesTasksThirdsCriticalVarietyPrimariesAttachmentEntrancesStimulationAvailabilitySchool YearsStages Of DevelopmentLanguage Development
Author:Jerome Kagan
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“Why should Pennsylvania, founded by the English, become a Colony of Aliens, who will shortly be so numerous as to Germanize us instead of our Anglifying them, and will never adopt our Language or Customs, any more than they can acquire our Complexion.”

ShouldLanguageAliensAcquireCustomsColonyPennsylvaniaComplexion
Book:The Works of Benjamin Franklin: Containing Several Political and Historical Tracts Not Included in Any Former Edition, and Many Letters, Official and Private, Not Hitherto Published; with Notes and a Life of the Author
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“One of the things I like about my job is that it draws on the entire person: not just your knowledge of grammar and punctuation and usage and foreign languages and literature but also your experience of travel, gardening, shipping, singing, plumbing, Catholicism, midwesternism, mozzarella, the A train, New Jersey. And in turn it feeds you more experience.”

PersonsJobsTurnsLiteratureLanguageSingingDrawsTrainCatholicismGardeningGrammarJerseyNew JerseyUsagePunctuationForeign LanguagePlumbingShippingMozzarella
Book:Between You & Me: Confessions of a Comma Queen
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“You're a product of our language, and how our laws are and how we believe our God wants us. Every bitty molecule about you has already been thought out by some million people before you. Anything you can do is boring and old and perfectly okay. You're safe because you're so trapped inside your culture. Anything you can conceive of is fine because you can conceive of it. You can't imagine any way to escape. There's no way you can get out.The world is your cradle and your trap.”

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Book:Invisible Monsters Remix
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“Words - so innocent and powerless as they are, as standing in a dictionary, how potent for good and evil they become in the hands of one who knows how to combine them.”

KnowsWritingCharacterHandsEvilLanguageKnow HowVirtueHonestyIntegrityStandingInnocentInnocenceGood And EvilPower Of WordsPowerlessCreative WritingDictionaryGood WritingGood WritersGreat WritersFiction WritersWritten WordGreat WritingRight WordsGood WordsGood Against EvilGood EvilWritten LanguageWriting WordsLanguage WordsPower Of LanguageLanguage And Power
Author:Nathaniel Hawthorne
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“There is no doubt about it: we are judged by our language as much as (perhaps more than) we are judged by our appearance, our choice of associates, our behavior. Language communicates so much more than ideas; it reveals our intelligence, our knowledge of a topic, our creativity, our ability to think, our self-confidence, et cetera.”

ThinkingIdeasSelfChoicesLanguageLeadershipAbilityCreativityDoubtSpeechBehaviorCommunicateAppearanceSelf ConfidenceNo DoubtJudgedAssociatesTopicsOur Choices
Book:The Language of leadership
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“Like the destroyer, the submarine has created its own type of officer and man with language and traditions apart from the rest of the service, and yet at the heart unchangingly of the Service”

MenHeartLanguageTypeTraditionOfficersDestroyersSubmarines
Book:The Complete Works of Rudyard Kipling (Illustrated): 5 Novels & 440+ Short Stories, Complete Poetry, Historical Military Works and Autobiographical Writings (Kim, The Jungle Book, The Man Who Would Be King, Land and Sea Tales, Captain Courageous…)
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“Dare I speak ,to oppressed and opressor in the same voice? Dare I speak to you in a language that will move beyond the boundaries of domination- a language, that will not bind you, fence you in, or hold you? Language is also a place of struggle. The oppressed struggle in language to recover ourselves, to reconcile, to reunite, to renew. Our words are not without meaning, they are an action, a resistance. Language is also a place of struggle.”

ActionMovingSpeakLanguageVoiceStruggleDareBoundariesResistanceOppressedFenceDominationReconcileOur Words
Book:Yearning: Race, Gender, and Cultural Politics
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“...in song the words tend to lose their significance, do often lose it, while at the other extreme, in current prose it is the musical value that tends to disappear - so that verse stands symmetrically, as it were, between song, on the one hand, and prose on the other - and is thus admirably and delicately balanced between the sensual and the intellectual power of language.”

HandsValuesSongLanguageLosesIntellectualMusicalCurrentsExtremesDisappearSensualProseSignificanceBalancedVersesPower Of Language
Author:Paul Valery
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“If you had the seeds of pestilence in your body you would not have a more active contagion that you have in your tempers, tastes, and principles. Simply to be in this world, whatever you are, is to exert an influence, compared with which mere language and persuasion are feeble.”

IfsWorldBodyLanguagePrinciplesInfluenceThis WorldTasteMereActiveSeedsYour BodyTemperPersuasionContagionPestilence
Book:Unconscious Influence; a sermon, etc
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“Is it not possible that the chimpanzees are responding to some feeling like awe? A feeling generated by the mystery of water; water that seems alive, always rushing past yet never going, always the same yet ever different. Was it perhaps similar feelings of awe that gave rise to the first animistic religions, the worship of the elements and the mysteries of nature over which there was no control? Only when our prehistoric ancestors developed language would it have been possible to discuss such internal feelings and create a shared religion.”

FirstsHas BeensDifferentFeelingsSeemsPastLanguageWaterAliveMysteryElementsWorshipAweInternalsAncestorRespondingRushingChimpanzeesPrehistoricMystery Of Nature
Author:Jane Goodall
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“My favorite thing is landscaping. I love landscaping. And so what I'll do is, mostly I put language into search engines, and if I want to look, like, at tulip gardens, or, like, Georgian gardens, i love English gardens, how they're laid out. Japanese gardens, Asian gardens. So, I'm kind of a frustrated landscaper.”

IfsWantLoveLooksKindLanguageGardenMy FavoriteEnginesFrustratedAsianFavorites ThingsSearch EngineLandscapingGeorgiansJapanese Gardens
Author:Michele Bachmann
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“The language of commerce has been engineered to describe the overt purpose of a thing, but cannot encompass fringe benefits or peripheral pleasures. It weighs the obvious against what in its terms are incomprehensible. When I drive from here to there, speed, privacy, control, and safety are easy to claim. When I walk, what happens is more vague, more ambiguous-and in many circumstances much richer. I am out in the world. It's exercise, though not so quantifiably as on a treadmill in a gym with a digital readout.”

WorldHas BeensHappensPurposeLanguageEasyTermWalksPleasureCircumstancesExerciseBenefitsClaimsSafetyEnvironmentalObviousSpeedPrivacyDigitalGymSustainabilityCommerceVagueFringeAmbiguousTreadmills
Author:Rebecca Solnit
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