Quotessence
Home / Topics / Language Quotes

Language Quotes

Browse 9447 quotes about Language.

Related topics

IfsPeopleSpeakThinkingWorldWayUseWritingKnowsMenEnglish LanguageHumansBookDifferentMeanFirstsCommunicationTryingWantArtShouldCultureNeedsKindMayFeelsFormIdeasMindWellsDoeTwoCountryChildrenLiteratureBodyHas BeensYearsImportantGivingFeelingsHeartSaidUsedCommonStoriesFactsLittlesWrittenSpeechMadeStillsUniversalForeign LanguageLongLooksMusic IsSoulPersonsBelieveSometimesSoundI CanMatterRealityPoetTongueCommunicateRealReasonSeemsWholeUnderstandingWould BeAbleTermNamesTranslationsSilenceProblemProgrammingEnoughSentencesStatesExpressionEndsTogetherAgeOrderPlayCharacterDifficultCertainMathematicsPoliticalCoursesHelpingNaturalReadingBody Languagemore

Language Quotes

“It has unfortunately now become a habit for so many generations, that it has almost passed into an instinct throughout the Jewish body, to rely upon the weapon of secrecy. Secret societies, a language kept as far as possible secret, the use of false names in order to hide secret movements, secret relations between various parts of the Jewish body: all these and other forms of secrecy have become the national method.”

UseBodyFormOrderNamesLanguageSecretGenerationsMovementHabitWeaponsRelationMethodInstinctJewVariousRelySecrecyRely UponSecret Society
Book:Belloc: A Biographical Anthology
Create image

“The learned languages are indispensable to form the gentleman and the scholar, and are well worth all the labor that they have cost us, provided they are valued not for themselves alone, which would make a pedant, but as a foundation for further acquirements.”

WellsFormLanguageCostLaborFoundationGentlemanScholarIndispensablePedants
Book:Lacon, Or, Many Things in a Few Words: Addressed to Those who Think
Create image

“We can no longer communicate with the apes by direct language, nor can we understand, without special study, their modes of communication which we have long since replaced by more elaborate forms. But it is at least presumable that they could still detect in our speech, at least when it is public and elaborate, the underlying tone values with which it began. Thus if we could take a gibbon ape to a college public lecture, he would not understand it, but he would "get a good deal of it." This is all the students get anyway.”

IfsLongStillsFormValuesLanguageDealsStudySpecialStudentsCollegeCommunicationSpeechDirectCommunicateToneReplacedLecturesApes
Book:Leacock on Life
Create image

“Childhood is analogous to language learning. It has a biological basis but cannot be realized unless a social environment triggers and nurtures it, that is, has need of it. If a culture is dominated by a medium that requires the segregation of the young in order that they learn unnatural, specialized, and complex skills and attitudes, then childhood, in one form or another, will emerge, articulate and indispensable.”

IfsNeedsFormYoungOrderCultureLanguageSocialAttitudeEnvironmentChildhoodSkillsBasesComplexesMediumsNurtureIndispensableSegregationTriggersUnnaturalLanguage LearningSocial Environment
Author:Neil Postman
Create image

“We sift reality through screens composed of ideas . (And such ideas have their roots in older ideas.) Such idea systems are necessarily limited by language , by the ways we can describe them. That is to say: language cuts the grooves in which our thoughts move. If we seek new validity forms (other laws and other orders) we must step outside language.”

IfsWayIdeasRealityMovingFormLawOrderLanguageStepsCuttingRootsScreensOur ThoughtsValidityGroove
Author:Frank Herbert
Create image

“King is a title which translated into several languages, signifies a magistrate with as many different degrees of power as there are kingdoms in the world, and he can have no power but what is given him by law; yea, even the supreme or legislative power is bound by the rules of equity, to govern by laws enacted, and published in due form; for what is not legal is arbitrary.”

WorldDifferentFormLawLanguageGivenKingsDegreesBoundsDuesSupremeKingdomsTitlesEquityArbitraryMagistrates
Book:A Supplement to the Miscellaneous Works of the Late Dr. Arbuthnot
Create image

“We started off with physical evolution and got our form. Then we somehow developed language, which meant cultural evolution could race so we could change our behavior really quickly instead of over hundreds and hundreds of years. And then comes moral evolution, which means we're not frightfully far along with people. And maybe we end up with a spiritual evolution, which is this connectedness with the rest of the life forms on the planet.”

PeopleYearsMeanEndsSpiritualFormLanguageRaceMoralPlanetsEvolutionBehaviorConnectednessSpiritual Evolution
Author:Jane Goodall
Create image

“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
Create image

“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
Create image

“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
Create image

“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
Create image

“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
Create image

“In the form of the oeuvre, the actual circumstances are placed in another dimension where the given reality shows itself as that which it is. Thus it tells the truth about itself; its language ceases to be that of deception, ignorance, and submission. Fiction calls the facts by their name and their reign collapses; fiction subverts everyday experience and shows it to be mutilated and false.”

FactsShowsRealityFormNamesLanguageGivenFictionIgnoranceCircumstancesEverydayCeaseDeceptionDimensionsTelling The TruthCollapseReignSubmissionReality Shows
Book:One-Dimensional Man: Studies in the Ideology of Advanced Industrial Society
Create image

“Freed from the sublimated form which was the very token of its irreconcilable dreams - a form which is the style, the language in which the story is told - sexuality turns into a vehicle for the bestsellers of oppression. ... This society turns everything it touches into a potential source of progress and of exploitation, of drudgery and satisfaction, of freedom and of oppression. Sexuality is no exception.”

StoriesDreamFormTurnsLanguageProgressStyleSourceSatisfactionSexualityOppressionExceptionVehicleExploitationTokensThis SocietyDrudgery
Author:Herbert Marcuse
Create image

“Marcel Duchamp, one of this century's pioneers, moved his work through the retinal boundaries which had been established with Impressionism into a field where language, thought and vision act upon one another. There it changed form through a complex interplay of new mental and physical materials, heralding many of the technical, mental and visual details to be found in more recent art... He declared that he wanted to kill art ("for myself") but his persistent attempts to destroy frames of reference altered our thinking, established new units of thought, a "new thought for that object."”

ThinkingArtWantedFormFoundLanguageVisionCenturyFieldsObjectsChangedMaterialsMovedComplexesDetailsBoundariesVisualsUnitsPersistentPioneersAlteredNew ThoughtFrame Of ReferenceImpressionism
Author:Jasper Johns
Create image

“It would be naïve to imagine that any analysis of experience is dependent on pattern expressed in language. Any concept, whether or not it forms part of the system of grammatical categories, can be conveyed in any language. If a notion is lacking in a given series, it implies a different configuration and not a lack of expressive power.”

IfsDifferentWould BeFormLanguageGivenImagineConceptsSeriesNotionPatternsAnalysisDependentCategoriesImagine ThatLackingExpressiveConfiguration
Author:Edward Sapir
Create image

“Many strange-looking people obviously dress according to deep convictions that are not shared by on-lookers - they clearly do not know how they actually look, but are satisfied with what their clothes make them feel and believe about their looks. These people may be the true originals, even though they are certainly not the best appreciated. The famous messages of dress, the well-known language of clothes, is very often not doing any communicating at all; a good deal of it is a form of private muttering.”

PeopleKnowsFeelsBelieveWellsLooksMayFormLanguageDealsKnownKnow HowStrangeMessagesClothesOriginalsDressesCommunicateConvictionSatisfiedWell KnownAppreciatedMuttering
Book:Sex and Suits: The Evolution of Modern Dress
Create image

“Language and, presumably, literature are more ancient and inevitable, more durable than any form of social organization. The revulsion, irony, or indifference often expressed by literature toward the state is essentially the reaction of the permanent-better yet, the infinite-against the temporary, against the finite.”

StatesFormLiteratureLanguageSocialOrganizationInfiniteAncientReactionsInevitablePermanentIronyIndifferenceTemporaryFiniteRevulsionSocial Organization
Author:Joseph Brodsky
Create image

“Not only the individual experience slowly acquired, but the accumulated experience of the race, organized in language, condensed in instruments and axioms, and in what may be called the inherited intuitions--these form the multiple unity which is expressed in the abstract term "experience.”

MayFormIndividualLanguageTermRaceExperienceInstrumentsUnityIntuitionAbstractOrganizedMultipleAxioms
Book:Problems of Life and Mind: v.1-2 . The foundations of a creed
Create image

“problematic within post-Reformation dogmatics. Is faith something I `do' to earn God's favour, and, if not, what role does it play? Once we release Paul's justification-language from the burden of having to describe `how someone becomes a Christian', however, this is simply no longer a problem. There is no danger of imagining that Christian faith is after all a surrogate `work', let alone a substitute form of moral righteousness. Faith is the badge of covenant membership, not something someone `performs' as a kind of initiation test.”

IfsKindDoePlayProblemChristianFormLanguageMoralRolesDangerTestsBurdenReleasePostsRighteousnessSubstitutesJustificationFavourCovenantReformationChristian FaithBadgesMembershipInitiationSurrogates
Author:N. T. Wright
Create image

“Man feels the urge to run up against the limits of language. Think for example of the astonishment that anything at all exists. This astonishment cannot be expressed in the form of a question, and there is also no answer whatsoever. Anything we might say is a priori bound to be nonsense. Nevertheless we do run up against the limits of language. Kierkegaard too saw that there is this running up against something, and he referred to it in a fairly similar way (as running up against paradox). This running up against the limits of language is ethics.”

ThinkingMenWayFeelsMightRunningFormLanguageAnswersSawsExampleLimitsEthicsBoundsNonsenseUrgesParadoxNeverthelessAstonishment
Author:Ludwig Wittgenstein
Create image

“Literature is a form of language that breaks with the whole definition of genres as forms adapted to an order of representations, and becomes merely a manifestation of a language which has no other law than that of affirming in opposition to all other forms of discourse its own precipitous existence.”

ArtWholeFormLawPoetryOrderLiteratureLanguageExistenceBreakDefinitionsGenreManifestationOppositionRepresentationDiscourseAdaptedAffirming
Book:The Order of Things
Create image