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Language Quotes

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Language Quotes

“All philosophy is a 'critique of language' (though not in Mauthner's sense). It was Russell who performed the service of showing that the apparent logical form of a proposition need not be its real one.”

Needs Real Philosophy Form Language Philosophical Logical Propositions Critique Real Ones

Book:Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus

Source: Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus

“I invented the colors of the vowels!--A black, E white, I red, O blue, U green--I made rules for the form and movement of each consonant, and, and with instinctive rhythms, I flattered myself that I had created a poetic language accessible, some day, to all the senses.”

Made Form Poetry Language Black White Movement Color Poet Red Blue Green Senses Rhythm Poetic Flattered Vowels Consonants

Author:Arthur Rimbaud

“But the nature of our civilized minds is so detached from the senses, even in the vulgar, by abstractions corresponding to all theabstract terms our languages abound in, and so refined by the art of writing, and as it were spiritualized by the use of numbers, because even the vulgar know how to count and reckon, that it is naturally beyond our power to form the vast image of this mistress called "Sympathetic Nature.”

Knows Writing Mind Art Use Form Language Term Numbers Know How Senses Civilized Vulgar Abstraction Mistress Sympathetic Refined Detached Corresponding Art Of Writing

Author:Giambattista Vico

“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)

“Different persons growing up in the same language are like different bushes trimmed and trained to take the shape of identical elephants. The anatomical details of twigs and branches will fulfill the elephantine form differently from bush to bush, but the overall outward results are alike.”

Persons Different Form Language Results Growing Up Growing Shapes Details Branches Elephants Identical Twigs

Book:Word and Object

Source: Word and Object

“The Iranian people were converted to Islam not very much longer after the conquest of the Arab world by Islam, but they refused to adopt the Arabic language, and it's a great point of pride to them that Persian culture and the Persian language and Persian literature survived the conversion to Islam. And the conversion to Islam also was for most of them not the Sunni majority form, but the Shia one. So there's a great discrepancy between Iranian society and many other of what we think of as Arab Muslim States and systems.”

“Music is 'significant form,' and its significance is that of a symbol, a highly articulated, sensuous object, which by virtue of its dynamic structure can express the forms of vital experience which language is peculiarly unfit to convey. Feeling, life, motion and emotion constitute its import.”

Feelings Form Language Emotion Music Virtue Objects Music Is Structure Significant Symbols Significance Imports Sensuous

Author:Susanne Katherina Langer

“in order to confer their lost Nationality upon exiled Jews , the British with the help of the League of Nations began to rehabilitate the old Hebrew country, Palestine, with its long lost children. The Jews had maintained their race, religion, culture and language; and all they wanted was their natural territory to complete their Nationality. The reconstruction of the Hebrew Nation on Palestine is just an affirmation of the fact that Country, Race, Religion, Culture and Language must exist unequivocally together to form the Nation idea.”

“To write well consists of continuously making small erosions, wearing away grammar in its established form, current norms of language. It is an act of permanent rebellion and subversion against social environs.”

Writing Wells Form Language Social Currents Permanent Rebellion Norm Grammar Erosion Subversion

Author:Jose Ortega y Gasset

“Here the term 'language-game' is meant to bring into prominence the fact that the speaking of language is part of an activity, of a form of life.”

Facts Form Games Language Term Activity Prominence

Author:Ludwig Wittgenstein