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Language Quotes
"Learning another language is not only learning different words for the same things, but learning another way to think about things."
45
"Language, when it finally comes, has the vigor of a felon pardoned after twenty-one years on hold. Sudden, raw, stripped to its underwear."
44
"We may come to Jesus and ask Him; He will know all about it; if He comes to a little child, he will adapt himself to the language and capacity of a little child."
43
"A language presupposes that all the individual users possess the organs."
42
"Drawing on my fine command of the English language, I said nothing."
42
"Come English Settlement, I had it in my head that I didn't want to tour."
41
"No one has a finer command of language than the person who keeps his mouth shut."
40
"It is with words as with sunbeams - the more they are condensed, the deeper they burn."
40
"A young man who is here speaks the Panis language, and in many other respects, is preferable."
40
"The thing is, in English I'm able to write the lyrics as I'm making the song, once I'm done with the melody."
40
"Curiously enough, it seems to be only in describing a mode of language which does not mean what it says that one can actually say what one means."
40
"Speaks cheerful English and in the past has written this language with a paintbrush that talks."
40
"Because everyone uses language to talk, everyone thinks they can talk about language."
40
"The greatest obstacle to international understanding is the barrier of language."
39
"Yes, living voices in a living language, so it seemed to us."
39
"So far as the advocates of a constructed international language are concerned, it is rather to be wondered at how much in common their proposals actually have, both in vocabulary and in general spirit of procedure."
39
"In the year 1915 a series of trivial incidents led some Chinese students in Cornell University to take up the question of reforming the Chinese language."
39
"In fact, eloquence in English will inevitably make use of the Latin element in our vocabulary."
39
"Nothing could go wrong because nothing had...I meant "nothing would." No - Then I quit trying to phrase it, realizing that if time travel ever became widespread, English grammar was going to have to add a whole new set of tenses to describe reflexive situations - conjugations that would make the French literary tenses and the Latin historical tenses look simple."
39
"When the English language gets in my way, I walk over it."
39
"There is nothing in philosophy which could not be said in everyday language."
39
"We are absurdly accustomed to the miracle of a few written signs being able to contain immortal imagery, involutions of thought, new worlds with live people, speaking, weeping, laughing. We take it for granted so simply that in a sense, by the very act of brutish routine acceptance, we undo the work of the ages, the history of the gradual elaboration of poetical description and construction, from the treeman to Browning, from the caveman to Keats. What if we awake one day, all of us, and find ourselves utterly unable to read? I wish you to gasp not only at what you read but at the miracle of its being readable."
38
"Perhaps the most striking aspect of this entire subject is that there are nonhuman primates so close to the edge of language, so willing to learn, so entirely competent in its use and inventive in its application once the language is taught. But this raises a curious question: Why are they all on the edge? Why are there no nonhuman primates with an existing complex gestural language? One possible answer, it seems to me, is that humans have systematically exterminated those other primates who displayed signs of intelligence."
38
"How do you even speak of, let alone propose regulation of, [any] category [so] full of internal contradictions? . . . Maybe, like so many other things, it is a language problem."
38
"The alphabet is where all our secrets begin."
37
"My plays are made up of long monologues, which is similar to prose working with the language."
37
"In English every word can be verbed. Would that it were so in our programming languages."
36
"Incomprehensible jargon is the hallmark of a profession."
36
"A standard international language should not only be simple, regular, and logical, but also rich and creative."
36
"An inability to handle language is not the same thing as stupidity."
36
"Those were the days, you know. It's an English thing; as soon as it's gets to 6 pm, you have to go and have a drink. We used to stick to that religiously."
36
"When I say or write something, there are actually a whole lot of different things I am communicating. The propositional content (i.e., the verbal information I'm trying to convey) is only one part of it. Another part is stuff about me, the communicator. Everyone knows this. It's a function of the fact there are so many different well-formed ways to say the same basic thing, from e.g. "I was attacked by a bear!" to "Goddamn bear tried to kill me!" to "That ursine juggernaut did essay to sup upon my person!" and so on."
36
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