Quotes About Language

Yes, it's a bit like learning French. When you open your mouth, you risk sounding like an idiot. But if you don't take that chance, you'll never speak at all.

It's embarrassing when the Clash are slavishly acclaimed by critics as the rock 'n' roll band of the decade—and yet, what other band has so successfully absorbed the music of so many cultures, digested it, and emerged with a startling, evocative language of their own?

Mr. Cultier, why do you pronounce your name Cult-E-A if you're American?" "How would you have me pronounce it, Bob?

Commoners always use too many words when they speak.

Beware the treachery of words... Words seem to be well-woven baskets ready to hold your meaning, but they betray you with rotted corners and splintered stays.

Beware the treachery of words, Mrs Sparrow. They mean one thing to one person and the opposite to another.

When Pat Holt strings together a list of words not to overuse—"Actually, totally, absolutely, completely, continually, constantly, continuously, literally, really, unfortunately, ironically, incredibly, hopefully, finally"—she's not being a stickler for formality and grammar. Instead she's reminding us that words matter, that poor word use is just a red flag for someone who wants to ignore you.

scatological

Like all languages, Atom is easier to learn when you're younger. With Paul Penfield, I co-teach a freshman course at MIT called Information and Entropy. The goal of this course, like the goal of this book, is to reveal the fundamental role that information plays in the universe.

She speaks poniards, and every word stabs.

silence is not a langauge, its a weapon to make your dear one to feel

ILL-AH-NO-WAY

Words. I'm surrounding by thousands of words. Maybe millions...Deep within me, words pile up in huge drifts. Mountains of phrases and sentences and connected ideas. Clever expressions. Jokes. Love songs...I have never spoken one single word. I am almost eleven years old.

We'd become aliens in our own land, he'd warned, denied our own laws, our own language, even our yesterdays, for a conquered people are not allowed a prideful past. Worst of all, we'd be leaving our children and grandchildren a legacy of misery and loss, a future bereft of hope.

You hair looks verily like spun gold, he said, and then laughed. I sound like every smitten lover since the world was green. Why must the language of love be so threadbare? There ought to be a way to tell you how I feel without evoking so many echoes, so many ghosts.

Thoughts need words. Words need a voice.

As I was typing this last sentence, somewhat hastily, my computer's spellcheck offered 'Brutish' as an acceptable substitute for 'British' rule in India!

We have no word for "Nation" in our language.

Brutish' as an acceptable substitute for 'British' rule in India!

A computer needs words to stay the same over long periods of time. A computer can't deal with a word that means one thing one year, another the next, or that slides from innocence into stupidity as silly did.

Language is a virus from outer space. WILLIAM BURROUGHS

Each species of intelligent life in the galaxy learned to limit its perceptions of the world it inhabited in order to preserve itself from insanity, then petrified those few chosen sensations into language. Once a child was brought up in a language system, it was impossible for her to hold a concept that couldn't be framed in that language.

Do you mind if I ask you a question, darlin'? Only if you stop calling me darlin' Now where I come from that's a term of endearment. Really? Well, where I come from motherfucker is a term of endearment. Want me to start calling you that?

I drew because words were too unpredictable.