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Language Quotes

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Language Quotes

“Both the Moral Majority, who are recycling medieval language to explain AIDS, and those ultra-leftists who attribute AIDS to some sort of conspiracy, have a clearly political analysis of the epidemic. But even if one attributes its cause to a microorganism rather than the wrath of God, or the workings of the CIA, it is clear that the way in which AIDS has been perceived, conceptualized, imagined, researched and financed makes this the most political of diseases.”

IfsWayHas BeensPoliticalLanguageCausesMoralClearDiseaseMajorityAidsAnalysisAttributesConspiracyWrathMedievalCiaEpidemicsRecyclingLeftistsUltrasWrath Of GodMicroorganisms
Author:Dennis Altman
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“Both dreams and myths are important communications from ourselves to ourselves. If we do not understand the language in which they are written, we miss a great deal of what we know and tell ourselves in those hours when we are not busy manipulating the outside world.”

IfsKnowsWorldImportantDreamLanguageHoursDealsWrittenMissingCommunicationBusyMythOutside World
Book:The Forgotten Language: An Introduction to the Understanding of Dreams, Fairy Tales, and Myths
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“The bold and discerning writer who, recognizing the truth that language must grow by innovation if it grow at all, makes new words and uses the old in an unfamiliar sense has no following and is tartly reminded that 'it isn't in the dictionary' - although down to the time of the first lexicographer no author ever had used a word that was in the dictionary.”

IfsFirstsUseUsedLanguageGrowsInnovationFollowingRecognizingDictionaryUnfamiliarDiscerningNew WordsLexicographer
Book:The Unabridged Devil's Dictionary
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“But this is predicated upon the man's becoming in very fact an American and nothing but an American. If he tries to keep segregated with men of his own origin and separated from the rest of America, then he isn't doing his part as an American. There can be no divided allegiance here. . . We have room for but one language here, and that is the English language, for we intend to see that the crucible turns our people out as Americans, of American nationality, and not as dwellers in a polyglot boarding-house; and we have room for but one soul loyalty, and that is loyalty to the American people.”

PeopleIfsMenTryingSoulFactsAmericaTurnsHouseLanguageRoomsBecomingLoyaltyDividedEnglish LanguageNationalityAllegianceCrucibleDwellersPolyglotsBoarding House
Book:Theodore Roosevelt Cyclopedia
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“You and I must realize that the English language is filled with words that, in addition to their literal meanings, convey distinct emotional intensity. For example, if you develop a habit of saying you 'hate' things - you 'hate' your hair; you 'hate' your job; you 'hate' having to do something - do you think this raises the intensity of your negative emotional states more than if you use a phrase like 'I prefer something else'?”

IfsThinkingStatesUseMotivationalJobsHateLanguageRealizingExampleEmotionalHairHabitNegativeRaisesFilledPhrasesIntensityEnglish LanguageLiteralJobs You Hate
Book:Awaken the Giant Within: How to Take Immediate Control of Your Mental, Emotional, Physical and Financial
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“Putting gloves on the fighters was a symbolic change that suggested that we were now making it a civilized sport, and it was no longer this crazy gladiatorial throwback to ancient Rome. It's even in our language: If you want to get serious and violent, what do you do? You "take the gloves off." Bare-fisted is supposedly a much more dangerous way to hit someone. But we've got it completely backward. The glove is a weapon. It massively accentuates the ability of the fist to do harm.”

IfsWayWantLanguageSportsAbilityCrazyDangerousSeriousWeaponsAncientHarmViolentFighterCivilizedRomeFistsSymbolicGlovesAncient RomeAccentuateThrowback
Author:Jonathan Gottschall
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“H. L Mencken's Dictionary of the American Language supplies a long list of slang terms for being drunk, but the Irish are no slouches, either. They're spannered, rat-arsed, cabbaged, and hammered; ruined, legless, scorched, and blottoed; or simply trolleyed or sloshed. In Kerry, you're said to be flamin'; in Waterford, you're in the horrors; and in Cavan, you've gone baloobas, a tough one to wrap your tongue around if you ARE baloobas. In Donegal, you're steamin', while the afflicted in Limerick are out of their tree.”

IfsLongSaidLanguageTermGoneTreeHorrorToughTongueListsDrunkRatsRuinedWrapsDictionarySuppliesSlangHammeredLimerickBeing DrunkAmerican Language
Author:Bill Barich
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“It is almost impossible to translate verbally and well at the same time; for the Latin (a most severe and compendious language) often expresses that in one word which either the barbarity or the narrowness of modern tongues cannot supply in more. ...But since every language is so full of its own proprieties that what is beautiful in one is often barbarous, nay, sometimes nonsense, in another, it would be unreasonable to limit a translator to the narrow compass of his author's words; it is enough if he choose out some expression which does not vitiate the sense.”

IfsWellsDoeSometimesEnoughWould BeBeautifulLanguageImpossibleModernExpressionLimitsTongueNonsenseLatinTranslateSevereCompassOne WordUnreasonableProprietyTranslatorsBarbarity
Author:John Dryden
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“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
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“Naked I came into the world, but brush strokes cover me, language raises me, music rhythms me. Art is my rod and staff, my resting place and shield, and not mine only, for art leaves nobody out. Even those from whom art has been stolen away by tyranny, by poverty, begin to make it again. If the arts did not exist, at every moment, someone would begin to create them, in song, out of dust and mud, and although the artifacts might be destroyed, the energy that creates them is not destroyed.”

IfsWorldHas BeensArtMomentsMightSongEnergyLanguagePovertyMinesArt IsRaisesTyrannyNakedDestroyedRhythmDustStaffStrokesBrushesMudStolenShieldsArtifactsBrush Strokes
Author:Jeanette Winterson
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“A partial Jewish State is not the end, but only the beginning. ... I am certain that we will not be prevented from settling in the other parts of the country, either by mutual agreements with our Arab neighbors or by some other means. . . [If the Arabs refuse] we shall have to speak to them in a different language. But we shall only have another language if we have a state.”

IfsWellsMeanEndsCountryStatesCertainSpeakLanguageRefuseNeighborSettlingAgreementMutualSettling In
Author:David Ben-Gurion
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“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
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“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
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“After all, in both languages we were dealing in large measure not with English and French, but with Scots and Irish, Bretons and Normans ... There could be no more eloquent illustration of the colonial mind-set than a bunch of Celts and Vikings in a distant northern territory insulting each other as les Anglais and the French as if they were the descendants of the people who had subjected and ruined them.”

PeopleIfsMindLanguageBunchTerritoryRuinedInsultingEloquentIllustrationDescendantsVikingsMind SetScotsCelts
Author:John Ralston Saul
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“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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