top of page
.png){kind=small}
"I learned English, my sixth language at this point, quite quickly."
Standard
Customized
Exlpore more Language quotes
"Perhaps then one reason why we have no great poet, novelist or critic writing today is that we refuse to allow words their liberty. We pin them down to one meaning, their useful meaning: the meaning which makes us catch the train, the meaning which makes us pass the examination."
"All speech, written or spoken, is a dead language, until it finds a willing and prepared hearer."
"Words are pale shadows of forgotten names. As names have power, words have power. Words can light fires in the minds of men. Words can wring tears from the hardest hearts."
"Great is language . . . . it is the mightiest of the sciences,It is the fulness and color and form and diversity of the earth . . . . and of men and women . . . . and of all qualities and processes;It is greater than wealth . . . . it is greater than buildings or ships or religions or paintings or music."
"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."
"Language is a tool for communicating and not a barrier to writing."
"Things are not as easily understood nor as expressible as people usually would like us to believe. Most happenings are beyond expression, they exist where a word has never intruded."
Explore more quotes by Roald Hoffmann
"One day I discovered that one could get the barrier to internal rotation in ethane approximately right using this method. This was the beginning of my work on organic molecules."
"I am a teacher, and I am proud of it. At Cornell University I have taught primarily undergraduates, and indeed almost every year since 1966 have taught first-year general chemistry."
bottom of page