Best speech & language Quotes | Short & Famous Sayings

“No child is capable of speech until he has heard other human beings speak, and even two infants reared together cannot develop a language from scratch.”

Humans Children Two Together Speak Language Human Beings Heard Speech Capable Infant Scratches

Book:WORD PLAY WHAT HAPPENS WHEN PEOPLE TALK

Source: WORD PLAY WHAT HAPPENS WHEN PEOPLE TALK

“Native speakers of a language know intuitively whether a sentence is grammatical or not. They usually cannot specify exactly what is wrong, and very possibly they make the same mistakes in their own speech, but they know-unconsciously, not as a set of rules they learned in school-when a sentence is incorrect.”

Knows School Language Mistake Speech Sentences Native Speakers Grammar Same Mistakes

Book:Word Play: What Happens When People Talk

Source: Word Play: What Happens When People Talk

“Remember that you are a human being with a soul and the divine gift of articulate speech: that your native language is the language of Shakespeare and Milton and The Bible; and don't sit there crooning like a bilious pigeon.”

Humans Soul Remember Language Human Beings Divine Speech Bible Native Pigeons Milton Native Language Pygmalion My Fair Lady

Book:Pygmalion

Source: Pygmalion

“Sign language is the equal of speech, lending itself equally to the rigorous and the poetic, to philosophical analysis or to making love.”

Philosophy Science Language Equal Speech Philosophical Analysis Poetic Making Love Lending Sign Language

Book:Seeing Voices

Source: Seeing Voices

“In making a speech one must study three points: first, the means of producing persuasion; second, the language; third the proper arrangement of the various parts of the speech.”

Firsts Mean Three Language Study Speech Thirds Various Arrangements Persuasion Hypnosis Power Of Persuasion

Book:Rhetoric

Source: Rhetoric

“When speech is divorced from speaker and word from meaning, what is left is just ritual, language as ritual.”

Left Language Speech Ritual Speakers Divorced

Author:Ellen Goodman

“If you listen to the urban speech patterns there you'll find it's quite characteristic that a sentence will begin in one language, go through a second language and end in a third. It's the very playful, very natural result of juggling languages. You are always reaching for the most appropriate phrase.”

Ifs Ends Language Natural Results Speech Thirds India Patterns Sentences Phrases Characteristics Reaching Appropriate Urban Juggling

Author:Salman Rushdie

“Silence is the only language of the realized. Practice moderation in speech.”

Language Silence Practice Speech Moderation Silence Is

Author:Sathya Sai Baba

“Entranced by the denotative power of words to define, to order, to represent the things around us, weve overlooked the songful dimension of language so obvious to our oral [storytelling] ancestors. Weve lost our ear for the music of language -- for the rhythmic, melodic layer of speech by which earthly things overhear us.”

Order Lost Language Speech Ears Obvious Storytelling Dimensions Ancestor Layers Power Of Words Overlooked Earthly Things

Author:David Abram

“The First Amendment's language leaves no room for inference that abridgments of speech and press can be made just because they are slight. That Amendment provides, in simple words, that "Congress shall make no law . . . abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press." I read "no law . . . abridging" to mean no law abridging.”

Firsts Mean Made Law Language Simple Rooms Speech Presses Congress Amendments Freedom Of Speech First Amendment Inference Simple Words

Author:Hugo Black

“Language most shows a man; speak that I may see thee; it springs out of the most retired and inmost parts of us, and is the image of the parent of it, the mind. No glass renders a man's form or likeness so true as his speech.”

Men Mind May Shows Form Speak Language Parent Speech Spring Glasses Thee Retired

Book:Ben Jonson

Source: Ben Jonson

“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.”

Ifs Long Stills Form Values Language Deals Study Special Students College Communication Speech Direct Communicate Tone Replaced Lectures Apes

Book:Leacock on Life

Source: Leacock on Life

“Make no mistake about it: the labeling of someone's language as 'sexist' involves a political judgment and implies the desirability of a particular sociological doctrine. One may be in favor of that doctrine (as I believe I am) but it is quite another matter to force writers by edicts and censorship into accepting it.”

Believe May Matter Political Language Force I Believe Mistake Accepting Particular Speech Judgment Favors Doctrine Censorship Sexist Labeling Sociological Desirability

Author:Neil Postman

“Speech is a rolling press that always amplifies one's emotions.”

Language Emotion Speech Presses Rolling Amplify

Book:Madame Bovary: (Penguin Classics Deluxe Edition)

Source: Madame Bovary: (Penguin Classics Deluxe Edition)

“The "sayings" of a community, its proverbs, are its characteristic comment upon life; they imply its history, suggest its attitude toward the world and its way of accepting life. Such an idiom makes the finest language any writer can have; and he can never get it with a notebook. He himself must be able to think and feel in that speech - it is a gift from heart to heart.”

Thinking World Way Feels Heart Able Language Community Attitude Accepting Speech Characteristics Comment Finest Notebook Idiom Heart To Heart Accepting Life

Book:Not Under Forty

Source: Not Under Forty

“I have declared again and again that if I say Aryans, I mean neither blood nor bones, nor hair nor skull; I mean simply those who speak an Aryan language. In that sense, and in that sense only, do I say that even the blackest Hindus represent an earlier stage of Aryan speech and thought than the fairest Scandinavians. To me an ethnologist who speaks of Aryan race, Aryan blood, Aryan eyes and hair, is as great a sinner as a linguist who speaks of a dolichocephalic dictionary or a brachycephalic grammar.”

Ifs Mean Eye Speak Language Race Blood Stage Hair Speech Bones Sinner Again And Again Grammar Dictionary Skulls Linguists Scandinavians

Author:Max Muller

“Speech is the best show a man puts on.”

Men Shows Language Speech

Book:Language, Thought, and Reality: Selected Writings of Benjamin Lee Whorf

Source: Language, Thought, and Reality: Selected Writings of Benjamin Lee Whorf

“Speech, originally, was the device whereby Man learned, imperfectly, to transmit the thoughts and emotions of his mind. By setting up arbitrary sounds and combinations of sounds to represent certain mental nuances, he developed a method of communication--but one which in its clumsiness and thick-thumbed inadequacy degenerated all the delicacy of the mind into gross and guttural signaling.”

Source: Foundation Trilogy

“I am adding another language to the spoken language, and I am trying to restore to the language of speech its old magic, its essential spellbinding power, for its mysterious possibilities have been forgotten.”

Trying Has Beens Language Magic Possibility Speech Essentials Forgotten Mysterious Spoken Language

Book:The Theater and Its Double

Source: The Theater and Its Double

“I don't particularly care about having [my characters] talk realistically, that doesn't mean very much to me. Actually, a lot of people speak more articulately than some critics think, but before the 20th century it really didn't occur to many writers that their language had to be the language of everyday speech. When Wordsworth first considered that in poetry, it was considered very much of a shocker. And although I'm delighted to have things in ordinary speech, it's not what I'm trying to perform myself at all: I want my characters to get their ideas across, and I want them to be articulate.”

People Thinking Want Writing Trying Firsts Mean Ideas Character Care Speak Language Century Speech Ordinary Critics Everyday 20th Century Delighted Wordsworth

Author:Louis Auchincloss

“It seems to me obvious that infants and many animals that do not in any ordinary sense have a language or perform speech acts nonetheless have Intentional states. Only someone in the grip of a philosophical theory would deny that small babies can literally be said to want milk and that dogs want to be let out or believe that their master is at the door.”

Want Believe Said States Seems Language Animal Doors Dog Masters Theory Baby Speech Ordinary Philosophical Obvious Deny Milk Infant

Author:John Searle

“In our time, political speech and writing are largely the defense of the indefensible. Things like the continuance of British rule in India, the Russian purges and deportations, the dropping of the atom bombs on Japan, can indeed be defended, but only by arguments which are too brutal for most people to face, and which do not square with the professed aims of the political parties. Thus political language has to consist largely of euphemism, question-begging and sheer cloudy vagueness.”

Source: Orwell and Politics

“There are 80 jobs in which women earn more than men - positions like financial analyst, speech-language pathologist, radiation therapist, library worker, biological technician, motion picture projectionist.”

Men Jobs Language Position Speech Workers Library Financial Radiation Therapists Analysts Motion Pictures Technicians

Author:Warren Farrell

“Wit must be without effort. Wit is play, not work; a nimbleness of the fancy, not a laborious effort of the will; a license, a holiday, a carnival of thought and feeling, not a trifling with speech, a constraint upon language, a duress upon words.”

Play Feelings Language Effort Speech Wit Fancy Holiday License Constraints Thoughts And Feelings Trifling Carnivals Duress

Book:Intuitions and Summaries of Thought

Source: Intuitions and Summaries of Thought

“The common fluency of speech in many men, and most women, is owing to a scarcity of matter and a scarcity of words; for whosoever is a master of language, and hath a mind full of ideas, will be apt, in speaking, to hesitate upon the choice of both.”

Men Mind Ideas Matter Choices Language Common Talking Masters Speech Scarcity Owing Fluency

Author:Jonathan Swift

“The less sophisticated of my forbears avoided foreigners at all costs, for the very good reason that, in their circles, speaking in tongues was commonly a prelude to snake handling. The more tolerant among us regarded foreign languages as a kind of speech impediment that could be overcome by willpower.”

Source: WORST YEARS OF OUR LIVES

“Once he became president, George [H.] Bush revealed a vein of Styrofoam and no matter how deep he tried to go, he always ended up bobbing on the surface. His inaugural speech was like being present at the death of language.”

Matter Language President Speech Surface Veins Inaugural Inaugural Speech Styrofoam

Author:Kate Clinton

“You follow words of the toga (language of the cultivated class). [Lat., Verba togae sequeris.]”

Language Class Speech Togas

Author:Aulus Persius Flaccus

“However great one's gift of language may be, there is always something that one cannot tell.”

May Language Speech Great Ones

Author:Mary MacLane

“[When her daughter suggested the President refer in his conversation with foreign dignitaries about lawn care to 'fertilizer' instead of to 'manure':] But remember, it took me almost thirty years to get him to call it manure.”

Years Care Remember Language President Conversation Speech Daughter Thirty Thirty Years Lawns Manure Fertilizer

Author:Bess Truman

“I try to teach my students style, but always as a part of life, not as ornament. Style has to come out of communicating coherent thought, not in sticking little flowers on speeches. Style and substance and a sense of life are the things literature is composed of. One must use one's own personality in relationship to life and language, of course, and everyone has such a relationship. Some people find it, some don't find it, but it's there.”

People Trying Littles Use Courses Literature Language Teach Style Students Flower Personality Speech Communicate Substance Parts Of Life Ornaments

Author:Marguerite Young

“It was pleasant to talk shop again; to use that elliptical, allusive speech that one uses only with another of one's trade.”

Use Language Speech Trade Pleasant Shops Jargon

Book:The Daughter of Time

Source: The Daughter of Time

“There are some words I find impossibly difficult ... 'Love,' 'feeling' and especially 'happiness' are at the head of the list. This is not because I haven't experienced any of them but because whenever I think about using the words I don't really know what anyone means by them. I'd find it easier to sit down and write a book about each (coming, obviously, to no conclusion) than to use them casually in speech or writing.”

Thinking Knows Writing Mean Book Use Feelings Language Difficult Havens Easier Speech Down And Lists Conclusion Love Feeling

Author:Jenny Diski

“Time in China has no immediacy as in America. Here I find the swift passage of our few earthly years accepted as naturally as the fall of flower and leaf. ... I hear and speak a language in which grammar has no tense. Both scholars and illiterates, in ordinary daily speech, tell an event of centuries ago as casually as an incident of the hour. Only as my knowledge has accumulated have I been able to know whether something related happened just then or in some past dynasty.”

Knows Years Able America Past Time Fall Speak Language Hours Happened Century Events Flower Speech Ordinary China Accepted Related Passages Scholar Leafs Grammar Incidents Tense Dynasty Immediacy

Author:Nora Waln

“Language becomes a prison house only poets can escape...if we do not reject any strict distinctions between ordinary usage and figures of speech.”

Ifs House Language Figures Poet Speech Ordinary Prison Distinction Rejects Strict Usage Figures Of Speech

Author:Arthur Quinn

“To invoke a Kierkegaardesque figure of speech, the beauty of the language of the Bible can be like a set of dentist's instruments nearly laid out on a table and hanging on a wall, intriguing in their technological complexity and with their stainless steel highly polished--until they set to work on the job for which they were originally designed. Then all of a sudden my reaction changes from "How shiny and beautiful they all are!" to "Get that damned thing out of my mouth!”

Source: Whose Bible Is It?: A Short History of the Scriptures

“Down through the years certain fads of slang had come and gone, and their vestiges could be found in Janie's and Mabel's conversation, like mastodon bones in a swamp.”

Years Certain Found Language Gone Conversation Speech Bones Through The Years Fads Swamps Slang Janie

Author:Dolores Hitchens

“The radicals...want speech regulated by codes that proscribe certain language. They see free speech as at best a delusion, at worst a threat to the welfare of minorities and women....The most obvious (and cynical) explanation for the switched positions is the switched situations. Protesting students became established professors and administrators. For outsiders, free speech is bread and butter; for insiders, indigestion. To the new academics, unregulated free speech spells trouble.”

“Tis an admirable thing to see how some people will labour to find out terms that may obscure a plain sense, like a gentleman I knew, who would never say 'the weather grew cold,' but that 'winter begins to salute us.' I have no patience for such coxcombs.”

People May Language Term Grew Cold Speech Winter Weather Gentleman Labour Obscure Admirable Salute No Patience I Have No Patience

Author:Dorothy Osborne

“Language is neither reactionary nor progressive; it is quite simply fascist; for fascism does not prevent speech, it compels speech.”

Doe Language Speech Progressive Fascism Fascists Reactionaries

Author:Roland Barthes

“Russian is such a tough and complex language that I am happy enough to understand everything and read most things pretty well, but, without constant practice, my speech is not what I wish it was, and I would sooner write in crayon than write a letter in Russian.”

Writing Wells Enough Language Wish Practice Speech Tough Letters Constant Complexes Crayon

Author:David Remnick

“It's a daily miracle to see a child grow and develop all the senses and language and speech and faculties, and they're so much fun and they're so delightful and they're so innocent. It just stops your heart every time; I can't get enough of it.”

Heart Children I Can Enough Language Fun Grows Speech Miracle Senses Innocent Faculty Delightful Daily Miracles

Author:Jann Wenner

“Our speech has its weaknesses and its defects, like all the rest. Most of the occasions for the troubles of the world are grammatical.”

World Language Education Trouble Speech Weakness Occasions Defects Misunderstanding

Book:Complete Essays

Source: Complete Essays

“The great pines stand at a considerable distance from each other. Each tree grows alone, murmurs alone, thinks alone. They do notintrude upon each other. The Navajos are not much in the habit of giving or of asking help. Their language is not a communicative one, and they never attempt an interchange of personality in speech. Over their forests there is the same inexorable reserve. Each tree has its exalted power to bear.”

Thinking Giving Helping Language Grows Tree Personality Bears Habit Speech Asking Distance Forests Reserves Exalted Inexorable Interchange

Book:The Song of the Lark

Source: The Song of the Lark

“First, in the history of words there is much that indicates the history of men, and in comparing the speech of to-day with that ofyears ago, we have a useful illustration of the effect of external influences on the very words of a race.”

Men Firsts Language Race History Influence Effects Speech Compare Illustration External Influences

Book:Delphi Complete Works of James Joyce (Illustrated)

Source: Delphi Complete Works of James Joyce (Illustrated)

“And from the first declension of the flesh I learnt man's tongue, to twist the shapes of thoughts Into the stony idiom of the brain.”

Thinking Men Firsts Language Brain Shapes Speech Tongue Flesh Thoughtful Twists Idiom

Book:The Poems of Dylan Thomas

Source: The Poems of Dylan Thomas

“There has been in our time a lack of reliance on language and a lack of experimentation which are frightening to anyone who sees them as symptoms. We know the phenomenon of stage-fright: it holds the player shivering, incapable of speech or action. Perhaps there is an audience-fright which the play can feel, which leaves him with these incapacities.”

Knows Feels Has Beens Play Action Language Audience Player Stage Speech Our Time Phenomenon Frightening Incapable Symptoms Reliance Experimentation Fright Incapacity Stage Fright

Author:Muriel Rukeyser

“Literature transforms and intensifies ordinary language, deviates systematically from everyday speech.”

Literature Language Speech Ordinary Everyday Quietness Deviate

Book:Literary Theory: An Introduction

Source: Literary Theory: An Introduction

“I learn immediately from any speaker how much he has already lived, through the poverty or the splendor of his speech. Life lies behind us as the quarry from whence we get tiles and copestones for the masonry of today. This is the way to learn grammar. Colleges and books only copy the language which the field and the work-yard made.”

Source: Essays and English Traits by Ralph Waldo Emerson

“He that would speak Divine things in a language which living men of to-day can comprehend, must keep up with the researches and discoveries of men who study nature, and put her words into the speech of the present.”

Men Speak Language Study Divine Speech Research Discovery

Author:John H. Vincent

Speech Quotes

Related topics

Speech Quotes