Quotes About Language

the physical substrate for thinking, the neural system, but the very fact that it has the form of a network implies that thought also has graph structure. This in turn suggests that language and its grammars, evolved later, also should be expressed in terms of graphs.

Wörter können wie Gift wirken. […] "Sie auch hier?" So ein harmloses Sätzchen, das aus einem freundlichen Mund das genaue Gegenteil besagen könnte. Wer das Wort verabreicht und wie, entscheidet über die Wirkung: Gift oder Gabe, Gnade oder Gnadenstoß.

The word for patience in Arabic is 'cactus'. They have the same meaning -'to endure thirst'.

Piaget also did not provide a detailed analysis of how communicative interaction leads to symbolic representation.

I think I am a verb instead of a personal pronoun. A verb is anything that signifies to be; to do; or to suffer. I signify all three.

The fact is I think I am a verb instead of a personal pronoun. A verb is anything that signifies to be; to do; to suffer. I signify all three.

Every evening words, not stars, light the sky. No rest in life like life itself.

They invent a howling theatrical language through which it becomes possible to express the grief of the whole world, a language understood by no one but the two of them.

burro, burrow: A /burro/ is an ass. A /burrow/ is a hole in the ground. As a journalist you are expected to know the difference.

When a man talks dirty to a woman, it's sexual harassment. When a woman talks dirty to a man, it's $3.95 a minute.

Some people use language to express thought, some to conceal thought, and others instead of thought.

God's last name is not "Dammit."

Krishna and His energy are fully present in the sound of the mantra, so even if we don't know the language or intellectually understand how it works, by coming in touch with Krishna we'll become happy, and our life will become sublime.

Stressed spelled backwards is desserts. Coincidence? I think not!

All general statements are false.

Don't use a big word where a diminutive one will suffice.

Reality" is the only word in the English language that should always be used in quotes.

Sometimes I want to suck on a beautiful word. To lick it clean.

Inflate the sentence. Try to make it burst.

O I'm babbling.

Public speaking is done in the public tongue, the national or tribal language; and the language of our tribe is the men's language. Of course women learn it. We're not dumb. If you can tell Margaret Thatcher from Ronald Reagan, or Indira Gandhi from General Somoza, by anything they say, tell me how. This is a man's world, so it talks a man's language.

The point I am trying to make is that words are a mysterious, ambiguous, ambivalent, and perfidious phenomenon. They can be rays of light in a realm of darkness. . . . They can equally be lethal arrows. Worst of all, at times they can be one or the other. They can even be both at once!

How does language interact with thought? Does language enable us to think, or does thinking enable us to talk?

How does language interact with thought? Does language enable us to think, or does thinking enable us to talk? Can we think in a sophisticated manner without silent internal speech? And lastly, how did this extraordinarily complex, multicomponent system originally come into existence in our hominin ancestors?