Quotes About Language

Words, like angels, are powers which have invisible power over us.

When words are scarce they are seldom spent in vain.

We need to be I think equally sensitive to the injurious power of certain kinds of speech acts but also to the subversive and possibly liberatory effects of certain kinds of play.

Air power speaks a strategic language so new that translation into the hackneyed idiom of the past is impossible.

I think we all have the power to name ourselves. I try to call people what it is they wish to be called. But we can take the sting out of epithets and bad words by using them.

[Perl] combines all the worst aspects of C and Lisp: a billion different sublanguages in one monolithic executable. It combines the power of C with the readability of PostScript.

One must know and recognize not merely the direct but the secret power of the word.

The power of the word is real whether or not you are conscious of it.

Increase your word power. Words are the raw material of our craft.

Power to translate is the test of having really understood one's own meaning.

If words can be lethal weapons, I must provide them with an arsenal.

It is hard indeed to notice anything for which the languages available to us have no description.

A reader's emotions can be sparked with few words. That's the power of dialogue.

Language is inexorably tied to power and understanding. And power and understanding are the roots of magic. Just the act of writing something down is a magical act.

profanity and obscenity entitle people who don't want unpleasant information to close their ears and eyes to you.

Words have longer lives than people.

Look, calling somebody in a wheelchair handicapable doesn't all of a sudden give them the power to climb stairs or the ability to grab Ho-Hos off the top shelf.

As words have an effective power of their own, curses reported against someone might turn against the speaker.

Language the most forcible proceeds from the man who is most sincere. The way to speak with power, or to write words that pierce mankind to the quick, is to speak and write honestly.

From antiquity, people have recognized the connection between naming and power.

If I could have any power, I think flying would definitely be up there! Along with speaking every language.

Whoever has power takes over the noun - and the norm - while the less powerful get an adjective.

Images have a unique power to impart that which is beyond words.

The right word is always a power, and communicates its definiteness to our action.