Quotes About Language

The best answer to bad speech is good speech

As fascinated as I was by words on paper, it was matched by my fascination with words in people's mouths. The spoken word. And that is the world of theatre.

That is where the irony of the film comes off, in terms of the language it employs - where he tries desperately to be a 'TV Dad ' to give advice and it's so pat it becomes ridiculous.

I grew up with the English language but not with the culture behind it. I was always outside that and deeply rooted in my own. I

And writing in a foreign language, you come to realise how words create not only a single image but a series of images, so that if the image created in the mind of the writer is different from the image in the mind of the reader, there will not be complete understanding between them. My

Religious ceremonial nowadays provides less opportunity for bad language and sexual symbolism.

They were singing in French, but the melody was freedom and any American could understand that.

Padece usted una de las dolencias más normales en el género humano: la necesidad de comunicarse con sus semejantes.

To write does not mean to convert the real into words but to make the power of the word real.

Forms disappear, words remain, to signify the impossible.

Letters couldn't care less whether what is written with them is true or false.

The dictionary is an ossuary of empty words.

The words of power, of authority, words above words, will be transformed into clever, lying words. Words below words.

Words are dirty by nature.

You have not yet destroyed oral tradition only because it is the one language that cannot be sacked, robbed, repeated, plagiarized, copied. What is spoken remains alive.

Ah, this blasted habit of mine of inventing or deriving words!

Who wants to make the language of dreams?

When words lose their meaning and their capacity to bind those who use them, neither democracy nor the rule of law can long survive.

The written word can be erased - not so with the spoken word.

To make things 'perfectly clear' is reactionary and stupefying. The real is not perfectly clear.

Learning to speak is like learning to shoot.

In Wahrheit hat sehr vieles mit dem meisten etwas zu tun, nur nicht der Satz »Dies hat mit jenem nichts zu tun« mit Nachdenken und Differenziertheit.

Most Muslims never delve into theology, and we rarely read the Quran; we are taught it in Arabic, which most Muslims can't speak. As a result, most people think that Islam is about peace. It is from these people, honest and kind, that the fallacy has arisen that Islam is peaceful and tolerant.

James, you ought to discover some day that words have an exact meaning.