Quotessence
Home / Topics / Language Quotes

Language Quotes

Browse 9447 quotes about Language.

Related topics

IfsPeopleSpeakThinkingWorldWayUseWritingKnowsMenEnglish LanguageHumansBookDifferentMeanFirstsCommunicationTryingWantArtShouldCultureNeedsKindMayFeelsFormIdeasMindWellsDoeTwoCountryChildrenLiteratureBodyHas BeensYearsImportantGivingFeelingsHeartSaidUsedCommonStoriesFactsLittlesWrittenSpeechMadeStillsUniversalForeign LanguageLongLooksMusic IsSoulPersonsBelieveSometimesSoundI CanMatterRealityPoetTongueCommunicateRealReasonSeemsWholeUnderstandingWould BeAbleTermNamesTranslationsSilenceProblemProgrammingEnoughSentencesStatesExpressionEndsTogetherAgeOrderPlayCharacterDifficultCertainMathematicsPoliticalCoursesHelpingNaturalReadingBody Languagemore

Language Quotes

“I don't change the language for children books. I don't make the language simpler. I use words that they might have to look up in the dictionary. The books are shorter, but there's just not that much difference other than that to be honest. And the funny thing is, I have adult writer friends [to whom I would say], "Would you think of writing a children's book?" and they go, "No, God, I wouldn't know how." They're quite intimidated by the concept of it. And when I say to children's books writers, would they write an adult book, they say no because they think they're too good for it.”

ThinkingKnowsWritingLooksChildrenBookUseMightLanguageDifferencesKnow HowHonestConceptsAdultsBeing HonestLook UpDictionaryFunny ThingsIntimidatedDon't ChangeChildren's BooksChildren BookChildrens Book
Author:John Boyne
Create image

“Filmmaking materials are in the hands of more people now than ever before. I would like to think that the more people have these tools, the more people will learn how to use them, it's another argument I would argue for, personally, for art's education. Because there are kids who aren't that literate in screen language and they've got to know how people select shots, how people edit audio, how people combine things to make what they see on the screen. It would be like the 15th century or the 16th century in Germany, and somebody amends a printing press and you don't know how to read and write.”

PeopleThinkingKnowsWritingArtUseHandsWould BeKidsLanguageKnow HowCenturyMaterialsShotsArgumentToolsPressesScreensArguingGermanyFilmmakingSelectEditsPrintingPrinting PressAudioAmends
Author:Murray Horwitz
Create image

“I believe that should is one of the most damaging words in our language. Every time we use it, we are, in effect, saying that we are wrong, or we were wrong, or we're going to be wrong. I would like to take the word should out of our vocabulary forever and replace it with the word could. This word gives us a choice, and we're never wrong.”

GivingShouldBelieveUseChoicesLanguageI BelieveForeverEffectsVocabulary
Book:Modern-Day Miracles
Create image

“People over the age of thirty were born before the digital revolution really started. We've learned to use digital technology-laptops, cameras, personal digital assistants, the Internet-as adults, and it has been something like learning a foreign language. Most of us are okay, and some are even expert. We do e-mails and PowerPoint, surf the Internet, and feel we're at the cutting edge. But compared to most people under thirty and certainly under twenty, we are fumbling amateurs. People of that age were born after the digital revolution began. They learned to speak digital as a mother tongue.”

PeopleFeelsHas BeensUseAgeMotherSpeakLanguageBornTechnologyCuttingRevolutionInternetAdultsOkayTwentiesCamerasEdgesTongueThirtyExpertsDigitalMailAssistantsSurfLaptopsForeign LanguageCutting EdgeMother TongueDigital TechnologyPowerpointDigital Revolution
Author:Ken Robinson
Create image

“There are some people that aren't into all the words. There are some people who would have you not use certain words. Yeah, there are 400,000 words in the English language, and there are seven of them that you can't say on television. What a ratio that is. 399,993 to seven. They must really be bad. They'd have to be outrageous, to be separated from a group that large. All of you over here, you seven. Bad words. That's what they told us they were, remember? 'That's a bad word.' You know bad words. Bad thoughts. Bad intentions.”

PeopleUseRememberCertainLanguageGroupsTelevisionYeahIntentionSevenEnglish LanguageOutrageousRatiosBad WordBad ThoughtsBad Intentions
Author:George Carlin
Create image

“This capacity for oversignifying, for reading in, is precisely what poets tap into, both in their own practice and in the poem the give to the reader; and in doing so they turn language against its own project of conceptual division, and use it to heal itself - and in the process - paradoxically - to articulate new concepts that it can't yet accommodate.”

GivingUsePoetryTurnsReadingLiteratureLanguageProcessPracticePoetReaderProjectsConceptsCapacityHealDivisionAccommodateHeal Itself
Author:Don Paterson
Create image

“When I was quite young I fondly imagined that all foreign languages were codes for English. I thought that "hat," say, was the real and actual name of the thing, but that people in other countries, who obstinately persisted in speaking the code of their forefathers, might use the word "ibu," say, to designate not merely the concept hat, but the English word "hat." I knew only one foreign word, "oui," and since it had three letters as did the word for which it was a code, it seemed, touchingly enough, to confirm my theory.”

PeopleRealCountryEnoughUseMightYoungThreeNamesLanguageChildhoodTheoryConceptsLettersCodeHatsOther CountriesForefathersForeign LanguageMight UseEnglish Words
Book:PILGRIM AT TINKER CREEK
Create image

“When philosophers use a word--"knowledge," "being," "object," "I," "proposition," "name"--and try to grasp the essence of the thing, one must always ask oneself: is the word ever actually used in this way in the language-game which is its original home?--What we do is to bring words back from their metaphysical to their everyday use.”

WayTryingUseHomeUsedAsksGamesNamesLanguageObjectsEssenceOriginalsEverydayOneselfPhilosopherMetaphysicsPropositionsMetaphysicalEveryday Use
Book:Philosophical Investigations
Create image

“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.”

KnowsWritingMindArtUseFormLanguageTermNumbersKnow HowSensesCivilizedVulgarAbstractionMistressSympatheticRefinedDetachedCorrespondingArt Of Writing
Author:Giambattista Vico
Create image

“The very natural tendency to use terms derived from traditional grammar like verb, noun, adjective, passive voice, in describing languages outside of Indo-European is fraught with grave possibilities of misunderstanding.”

UseLanguageVoiceTermNaturalPossibilityGravesTraditionalTendenciesPassiveMisunderstandingGrammarDescribingVerbsAdjectivesNounsPassive Voice
Book:Language, Thought, and Reality: Selected Writings of Benjamin Lee Whorf
Create image

“[H]ow do I pity those who (assuming the name of friends) surround themselves with maxims importing the wisdom of doubt and suspicion, 'til they impose on themselves that very hard task of laboring through life without ever knowing a human creature to whom they can make the proper use of language and freely speak the dictates of their hearts!”

HumansHeartHardUseValuesNamesSpeakLanguageFriendshipKnowingDoubtFriendsCreaturesTasksAssumingPitySurroundSuspicionMaximsUse Of Language
Author:Sarah Fielding
Create image

“My friend had a brilliant idea. This impressed me. It reflected an immense deal of credit on his brain. But when he expressed it,it lost all value, and enjoyed but a commonplace status. My friend blamed this devaluation on the language. "I hate English," he said. So he studied another language. He mastered it so perfectly that there was no room left in his brain for a brilliant idea. Now he has a grudge against words. He refuses to use them. He prefers to shrug or grunt. A new crop of ideas is growing. They show promise of future refinement.”

SaidIdeasUseShowsValuesHateLostLeftLanguageRoomsDealsBrainGrowingPromiseMy FriendsI HateRefuseCreditBrilliantEnjoyedImmenseImpressedCropsCommonplaceGrudgeRefinementBrilliant IdeasGrunt
Author:Marvin L. Cohen
Create image

“The etymologist finds the deadest word to have been once a brilliant picture. Language is fossil poetry. As the limestone of the continent consists of infinite masses of the shells of animalcules, so language is made up of images or tropes, which now, in their secondary use, have long ceased to remind us of their poetic origin.”

LongHas BeensMadeUseEarthLanguageMassInfiniteBrilliantPoeticContinentsShellsFossilsTropesLimestone
Book:Essays and Lectures
Create image

“The physicist may be satisfied when he has the mathematical scheme and knows how to use for the interpretation of the experiments. But he has to speak about his results also to non-physicists who will not be satisfied unless some explanation is given in plain language. Even for the physicist the description in plain language will be the criterion of the degree of understanding that has been reached.”

KnowsMayHas BeensPhilosophyUseSpeakLanguageGivenUnderstandingResultsKnow HowDegreesPhysicsExperimentsSatisfiedMathematicalExplanationDescriptionInterpretationSchemesPhysicistCriteriaPlain Language
Author:Werner Heisenberg
Create image

“Next, 'real' is what we may call a trouser-word. It is usually thought, and I dare say usually rightly thought, that what one might call the affirmative use of a term is basic--that, to understand 'x,' we need to know what it is to be x, or to be an x, and that knowing this apprises us of what it is not to be x, not to be an x. But with 'real' (as we briefly noted earlier) it is the negative use that wears the trousers.”

KnowsNeedsMayRealUseMightNextLanguageTermKnowingNegativeDareAffirmativeTrousers
Author:J. L. Austin
Create image

“The hypothesis I wish to advance is thatthe language of morality is ingrave disorder.... What we possess, if this is true, are the fragments of a conceptual scheme, parts of which now lack those contexts from which their significance derived. We possess indeed simulacra of morality, we continue to use many of the key expressions. But we have--very largely if not entirely--lost our comprehension, both theoretical and practical, of morality.”

IfsUseLostLanguageWishExpressionKeysMoralityPracticalsSignificanceDisorderSchemesHypothesisFragmentsTheoreticalComprehension
Author:Alasdair MacIntyre
Create image

“I am not of the opinion generally entertained in this country [England], that man lives by Greek and Latin alone; that is, by knowing a great many words of two dead languages, which nobody living knows perfectly, and which are of no use in the common intercourse of life. Useful knowledge, in my opinion, consists of modern languages, history, and geography; some Latin may be thrown into the bargain, in compliance with custom, and for closet amusement.”

KnowsMenMayTwoCountryUseLanguageCommonEducationOpinionKnowledgeKnowingLearningModernEnglandGreekGreat MenThrownLive ByCustomsLatinClosetsAmusementGeographyIntercourseBargainsComplianceUseful KnowledgeModern Languages
Author:Lord Chesterfield
Create image

“I started by saying that one of the most fateful errors of our age is the belief that the problem of production has been solved. This illusion, I suggested, is mainly due to our inability to recognize that the modern industrial system, with all its intellectual sophistication, consumes the very basis on which is has been erected. To use the language of the economist, it lives on irreplaceable capital which it cheerfully treats as income.”

Has BeensUseProblemAgeBeliefLanguageModernIntellectualIllusionTreatsBasesErrorsEnvironmentalProductionsDuesIncomeEconomistInabilityStewardshipSophisticationIrreplaceableSmall Is Beautiful
Book:SMALL IS BEAUTIFUL
Create image

“I LOVE WAL-MART. I CONSIDER MY JOKES TO BE VERY JEUVINILLE. STUFF A 14 YEAR OLD WOULD LAUGH AT BECAUSE THATS THE SENCE OF HUMOR I HAVE. ALL THE STUFF I TALK ABOUT MAY NOT BE APPROPRIATE FOR CHURCH GROUPS HOWEVER WAL-MART AINT SUNDAY SCHOOL. AS LONG AS I DIDNT USE OFFENSIVE FOUL LANGUAGE I KNEW ID BE FINE. WAL-MART GETS IT, THATS WHY THEY BLOW AWAY THE COMPETITION. BESIDES ITS THERE STORE THEY CAN DO WHAT THEY WANT. THATS AMERICA BABY!”

WantYearsMayLongUseSchoolAmericaLanguageStuffCan DoChurchLaughingGroupsBabyFineJokesCompetitionBlowStoresAppropriateSundayOffensiveFoulSunday SchoolFoul Language
Author:Larry the Cable Guy
Create image