Motivational Quotes

Language

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.

- Baudrillard, Jean

Best Quotes about Language

When ideas fail, words come in very handy.

Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

The great thing about human language is that it prevents us from sticking to the matter at hand.

Lewis Thomas

My words fly up, my thoughts remain below: Words without thoughts never to heaven go.

William Shakespeare

The English language is rather like a monster accordion, stretchable at the whim of the editor, compressible ad lib.

Burchfield, Robert

Think like a wise man but communicate in the language of the people.

William Butler Yeats

Grasp the subject, the words will follow.

Cato the Elder

For me, words are a form of action, capable of influencing change.

Ingrid Bengis

How many languages are there in the world? How about 5 billion! Each of us talks, listens, and thinks in his her own special language that has been shaped by our culture, experiences, profession, personality, mores and attitudes. The chances of us meeting someone else who talks the exact same language is pretty remote.

Methinks the human method of expression by sound of tongue is very elementary, and ought to be substituted for some ingenious invention which should be able to give vent to at least six coherent sentences at once.

Woolf, Virginia

10.

Language is a process of free creation; its laws and principles are fixed, but the manner in which the principles of generation are used is free and infinitely varied. Even the interpretation and use of words involves a process of free creation.

Chomsky, Noam

11.

I wish life was not so short, he thought. languages take such a time, and so do all the things one wants to know about.

Tolkien, J. R.

12.

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

Bachelard, Gaston

13.

Speak properly, and in as few words as you can, but always plainly; for the end of speech is not ostentation, but to be understood.

William Penn

14.

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

Appleton, Sir Edward

15.

Those who know nothing of foreign languages, knows nothing of their own.

Goethe, Johann Wolfgang Von

16.

We dissect nature along lines laid down by our native language. Language is not simply a reporting device for experience but a defining framework for it.

Whorf, Benjamin Lee

17.

Language is the blood of the soul into which thoughts run and out of which they grow.

Holmes, Oliver Wendell

18.

If the announcer can produce the impression that he is a gentlemen, he may pronounce as he pleases.

Shaw, George Bernard

19.

To have another language is to possess a second soul.

Charlemagne

20.

If the Romans had been obliged to learn Latin they would never have found time to conquer the world.

Heine, Heinrich

21.

The eyes have one language everywhere.

Herbert, George

22.

No language is rude that can boast polite writers.

Beardsley, Aubrey

23.

The words of language, as they are written or spoken, do not seem to play any role in my mechanism of thought. The physical entities which seem to serve as elements in thought are certain signs and more or less clear images.

Einstein, Albert

24.

If English is spoken in heaven. God undoubtedly employs Cranmer as his speechwriter. The angels of the lesser ministries probably use the language of the New English Bible and the Alternative Service Book for internal memos.

Charles, Prince Of Wales

25.

Man, even man debased by the neocapitalism and pseudosocialism of our time, is a marvelous being because he sometimes speaks. Language is the mark, the sign, not of his fall but of his original innocence. Through the Word we may regain the lost kingdom and recover powers we possessed in the far-distant past.

Paz, Octavio

26.

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.

Man, Paul De

27.

The problems of society will also be the problems of the predominant language of that society. It is the carrier of its perceptions, its attitudes, and its goals, for through it, the speakers absorb entrenched attitudes. The guilt of English then must be recognized and appreciated before its continued use can be advocated.

Ndebele, Njabulo

28.

The living language is like a cowpath: it is the creation of the cows themselves, who, having created it, follow it or depart from it according to their whims or their needs. From daily use, the path undergoes change. A cow is under no obligation to stay

White, Elwyn Brooks

29.

Man acts as though he were the shaper and master of language, while in fact language remains the master of man.

Heidegger, Martin

30.

And who in time knows whither we may vent the treasure of our tongue, to what strange shores this gain of our best glories shall be sent, 't unknowing Nations with our stores? What worlds in the yet unformed Occident may come refined with the accents that are ours?

Daniel, Samuel

31.

Language furnishes the best proof that a law accepted by a community is a thing that is tolerated and not a rule to which all freely consent.

Saussure, Ferdinand De

32.

One can say of language that it is potentially the only human home, the only dwelling place that cannot be hostile to man.

Berger, John

33.

The English language is nobody's special property. It is the property of the imagination: it is the property of the language itself.

Walcott, Derek

34.

As advertising blather becomes the nation's normal idiom, language becomes printed noise.

Will, George F.

35.

We don't just borrow words; on occasion, English has pursued other languages down alleyways to beat them unconscious and rifle their pockets for new vocabulary.

Washington, Booker T.

36.

Words have a longer life than deeds.

Pindar

37.

I speak Spanish to God, Italian to women, French to men and German to my horse.

Charles V

38.

Language is a part of our organism and no less complicated than it.

Wittgenstein, Ludwig

39.

Language exerts hidden power, like a moon on the tides.

Rita Mae Brown

40.

Language is a form of human reason, which has its internal logic of which man knows nothing.

Levi-Strauss, Claude

41.

Poetry is the language of feeling.

Winter, W.

42.

To rescue from oblivion even a fragment of a language which men have used and which is in danger of being lost --that is to say, one of the elements, whether good or bad, which have shaped and complicated civilization --is to extend the scope of social observation and to serve civilization.

Hugo, Victor

43.

Male supremacy is fused into the language, so that every sentence both heralds and affirms it.

Dworkin, Andrea

44.

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

Pfizer, Sydney

45.

Language is the pedigree of nations.

Johnson

46.

Language is political. That's why you and me, my Brother and Sister, that's why we supposed to choke our natural self into the weird, lying, barbarous, unreal, white speech and writing habits that the schools lay down like holy law. Because, in other words, the powerful don't play; they mean to keep that power, and those who are the powerless (you and me) better shape up --mimic ape suck --in the very image of the powerful, or the powerful will destroy you --you and our children.

Jordan, June

47.

If everything is perfect, language is useless. This is true for animals. If animals don't speak, it's because everything's perfect for them. If one day they start to speak, it will be because the world has lost a certain sort of perfection.

Baudrillard, Jean

48.

As societies grow decadent, the language grows decadent, too. Words are used to disguise, not to illuminate, action: you liberate a city by destroying it. Words are to confuse, so that at election time people will solemnly vote against their own interests

Vidal, Gore

49.

Our language has wisely sensed the two sides of being alone. It 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.

Tillich, Paul

50.

A man thinks that by mouthing hard words he understands hard things.

Herman Melville