Quotes About Language

A long descriptive name is better than a short enigmatic name. A long descriptive name is better than a long descriptive comment.

Every time you write a comment, you should grimace and feel the failure of your ability of expression.

Remember that code is really the language in which we ultimately express the requirements. We may create languages that are closer to the requirements. We may create tools that help us parse and assemble those requirements into formal structures. But we will never eliminate necessary precision—so there will always be code.

It is not the language that makes programs appear simple. It is the programmer that make the language appear simple!

A chrysanthemum by any other name would be a lot easier to spell.

But what does building socialism mean if we translate this formula into concrete class language? Building socialism in the USSR means overcoming our Soviet bourgeoisie by our own forces in the course of a struggle."[

The English language may hold a more disagreeable combination of words than "The doctor will see you now." I am willing to concede something to the phrase "Have you anything to say before the current is turned on?" That may be worse for the moment, but it doesn't last so long. For continued, unmitigating depression, I know nothing to equal "The doctor will see you now." But I'm not narrow-minded about it. I'm willing to consider other possibilities.

Does it make me a better person to read Cicero in the original? Cicero, for god's sake? The Alan Dershowitz of the Roman Republic?

The problem is, when things go verbal, you drop out the detail.

human tongue is a beast that few can master.

Those who make assumptions from far away, based on universal theories, do not see the whole picture. It takes great time and effort to see the differences, to participate in a culture. And because it is much harder to percieve these differences, culture has not been given its due as one of the primary shaping forces for language and for how we experience the world.

In other words, we do not have conscious access to the origins of our emotions and the moods they generate. Once we feel them, all we can do is try to interpret the emotion, translate it into language.

words have that insidious ability to be interpreted according to the other person's mood and insecurities.

no existe un gesto que no comunique un significado.

human tongue is a beast that few can master. It strains constantly to break out of its cage, and if it is not tamed, it will run

I found, for example, that Cicero was fond of repeating certain phrases, and these I learned to reduce to a line, or even a few dots--thus proving what most people already know, that politicians essentially say the same thing over and over again.

Does a name stick because it suits a man or does the man, unconsciously, evolve into his name?

From the Latin, con clavis : 'with a key'.

What are the only weapons I possess, Tiro? he asked me, and then he answered his own question. These. he said, gesturing at his books. Words. Caesar and Pompey have their soldiers, Crassus his wealth, Clodius his bullies on the street. My only legions are my words. By language I rose, and by language I shall survive.

She was my—? I never knew what to call her. To say she was my girlfriend was absurd; no one the wrong side of thirty has a girlfriend. Partner wasn't right either, as we didn't live under the same roof. Lover? How could one keep a straight face? Mistress? Do me a favor. Fiancée? Certainly not. I suppose I ought to have realized it was ominous that forty thousand years of human language had failed to produce a word for our relationship.

Cicero's first law of rhetoric, that a speech must always contain at least one surprise.

the business of statesmanship is to invent new terms for institutions which under their old names have become odious to the public.

Her silence was more eloquent than any words.

Men always say they didn't mean it that way. You would think they spoke a different language.