Quotes About Language

I think pictures and words have the power to make us rich or poor.

A Word that Breathes Distinctly Has not the Power to Die

We are all born with the power of speech, but we need grammar. Conscience, too, needs Revelation.

Language creates reality. Words have power. Speak always to create joy.

We tend to look through language and not realize how much power language has

Words to me were magic. You could say a word and it could conjure up all kinds of images or feelings or a chilly sensation or whatever. It was amazing to me that words had this power.

The power of nature exists in its silence. Human words cannot encode the meaning because human language has access only to the shadow of meaning.

What is translated from English and into English - and in what quantities - is a question of power.

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

He who wants to persuade should put his trust not in the right argument, but in the right word. The power of sound has always been greater than the power of sense.

I have hated words and I have loved them, and I hope I have made them right.

Fifty years ago, the spoken word reigned, but during the last fifty years, the power has gone over to pictures.

All that is literature seeks to communicate power

Words are power. And a book is full of words. Be careful what power you get from it. But know that you do.

Words themselves are innocuous; it is the consensus that gives them true power.

Written words still have the amazing power to bring out the best and worst of human nature

Comics deal with two fundamental communicating devices: words and images. Admittedly this is an arbitrary separation. But, since in the modern world of communication they are treated as independent disciplines, it seems valid. Actually, the are derivatives of a single origin and in the skillful employment of words and images lies the expressive potential of the medium.

I speak Japanese the way a bear dances. It's not that the bear dances well that impresses people, it's the fact the bear dances at all.)

Nothing you can't spell will ever work.

The minute you read something that you can't understand, you can almost be sure that it was drawn up by a lawyer.

We've reached a point in American history when death has become almost the last obscenity. Have you noticed how many of us refuse to say 'he or she died'? We're far more likely to say 'she passed away,' as though death were a sterile process of modest preparation, followed by shrink-wrapping, then rapid transit—where? Well, elsewhere. In short, it's the single thing we're loath to discuss in public.

Whenever people use a word so often that they abbreviate it, it is clearly central to their moral and emotional vocabulary.

Give the people a new word and they think they have a new fact.

Literatuur is de neerslag of het verslag van een geestelijk avontuur in een taal die eigen, levend en origineel is.