Language Quotes

Quotations
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No one has a finer command of language than the person who keeps his mouth shut.
Sam Rayburn

The four most beautiful words in our common language: I told you so.
Gore Vidal

Even if people are suspicious of the motives I think that learning and speaking two languages can only be a good thing for people.
Stephen Harper

I believe that there is a devil. Those who disagree with me in this may translate my language. All I ask is that they admit the vital truth on which I insist.
Anthony Comstock

I do not mind what language an opera is sung in so long as it is a language I do not understand.
Sir Edward Appleton

The quality of our thoughts is bordered on all sides by our facility with language.
J Michael Straczynski

Snogging is the universal language of the world
Mark Feehily

Philosophy is a battle against the bewitchment of our intelligence by means of language.
Ludwig Wittgenstein

Every legend, moreover, contains its residuum of truth, and the root function of language is to control the universe by describing it.
James Baldwin

Dreams say what they mean, but they don't say it in daytime language
Gail Godwin

We have really everything in common with America nowadays except, of course, language
Oscar Wilde

The language and concepts contained herein are guaranteed not to cause eternal torment in the place where the guy with the horns and pointed stick conducts his business
Frank Zappa

To have another language is to possess a second soul.
Charlemagne

Never resist a sentence you like, in which language takes its own pleasure and in which, after having abused it for so long, you are stupefied by its innocence.
Jean Baudrillard

Accuracy of language is one of the bulwarks of truth
Anna Brownell Jameson

By and large, language is a tool for concealing the truth.
George Carlin

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!'
Jaroslav Pelikan

The English language has a deceptive air of simplicity; so have some little frocks; but they are both not the kind of thing you can run up in half an hour with a machine.
Dorothy L Sayers

Political chaos is connected with the decay of language... one can probably bring about some improvement by starting at the verbal end.
George Orwell

The problems of language here are really serious. We wish to speak in some way about the structure of the atoms. But we cannot speak about atoms in ordinary language
Werner Heisenberg

The lapse of ages changes all things - time, language, the earth, the bounds of the sea, the stars of the sky, and every thing 'about, around, and underneath' man, except man himself.
Lord Byron

But if thought corrupts language, language can also corrupt thought.
George Orwell

I wonder what language truck drivers are using,
now that everyone is using theirs?
Beryl Pfizer

Good writers are those who keep the language efficient. That is to say, keep it accurate, keep it clear.
Ezra Pound

On his own history with mathematics, and connection with John Nash: 'I had a bit of a hiccup in the third year of high school. The school I was at hired a non-English speaking Hungarian who was a professional of some great standing in Eastern Europe. But he hadn't learned the English language yet. He probably is a great asset to the teaching staff now, but we were his first class. That was when mathematics and I parted ways.

'There's a lot of mathematics in music. It's all in groups of eight, mate, y'know. The one thing that I may have in common with John is that the subject matter I do know, the driving part of my life, my work life, there's a point where structure and scaffolding is left behind and intuition takes over. That's the difference between John and the next 100 mathematicians. He's fully prepared to leave the scaffolding behind and get into the ether of the equation and find the answer quicker. The bane of his existence, however, is finding the proof.'
Russell Crowe

Science and technology multiply around us. To an increasing extent they dictate the languages in which we speak and think. Either we use those languages, or we remain mute.
J G Ballard

An animal's eyes have the power to speak a great language.
Martin Buber

Two nations divided by a common language.
Winston Churchill

When I read great literature, great drama, speeches, or sermons, I feel that the human mind has not achieved anything greater than the ability to share feelings and thoughts through language
James Earl Jones

A special kind of beauty exists which is born in language, of language, and for language.
Gaston Bachelard

[on understanding] The definition is this: to understand something is to know what it means, to know what its significance is. To understand a sentence is to know what it means, to understand a language is to know what its words and sentences mean, to understand a phenomenon more generally is to know its significance.
Tim Crane

Our thirty year old belief that there is only one kind of computer is the basis for our belief that there is only one kind of programming language.
John Backus

I have to admit that I don't even try to speak Russian, though I understand it perfectly. I wouldn't want to insult the language by testing out my pronunciations
Lana Wood

But here's old Ken - he's been crass, he's been insensitive and thuggish and brutal in his language - but I don't think actually if you read what he said, although it was extraordinary and rude, I don't think he was actually anti-Semitic.
Boris Johnson

My first language was shy. It's only by having been thrust into the limelight that I have learned to cope with my shyness.
Al Pacino

I think foreign countries really do like it when American artists sing in their language. And when you go over there and say, 'Hi, how are you?' in their language, they love it. It makes them feel like you're doing it just for them. We in America take so much for granted.
Natalie Cole

Speaks cheerful English and in the past has written this language with a paintbrush that talks.
Jimmy Breslin

I came up with new leads for game stories by being observant and clever, by using the many gifts of the English language to intrigue and hook a reader.
Dick Schaap

Real programmers can write assembly code in any language.
Larry Wall

If the whole of the english language could be condensed into one word, it would not suffice to express the utter contempt those invite who are so deluded as to be disciples of such an imposture as Darwinism.
Francis Morris

No language is rude that can boast polite writers.
Aubrey Beardsley

Language... has created the word 'loneliness' to express the pain of being alone. And it has created the word 'solitude' to express the glory of being alone.
Paul Tillich

Viewed freely, the English language is the accretion and growth of every dialect, race, and range of time, and is both the free and compacted composition of all.
Walt Whitman

Parents should conduct their arguments in quiet, respectful tones, but in a foreign language. You'd be surprised what an inducement that is to the education of children.
Judith Martin

Language tethers us to the world; without it we spin like atoms
Penelope Lively

FEAR is an acronym in the English language for 'False Evidence Appearing Real'
Neale Walsch

It is difficult for a woman to define her feelings in language which is chiefly made by men to express theirs.
Thomas Hardy

Works of imagination should be written in very plain language; the more purely imaginative they are the more necessary it is to be plain.
Samuel Taylor Coleridge

Money speaks sense in a language all nations understand.
Aphra Behn

Language is not only the vehicle of thought, it is a great and efficient instrument in thinking.
Humphrey Davy



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