Quotes About Language

Computers are getting smarter all the time. Scientists tell us that soon they will be able to talk to us. (And by 'they', I mean 'computers'. I doubt scientists will ever be able to talk to us.)

You don't talk to a linguist without having what you say taken down and used in evidence against you at some point in time.

As a young actor, I booked a movie in the U.S. I didn't speak any English at the time, so I learned my lines phonetically when I auditioned for it.

You can say a lot in a little time, if you stick to words of one syllable.

Never argue with a pedant over nomenclature. It wastes your time and annoys the pedant.

Good translations are one of the vital necessities of our time.

Language. I loved it. And for a long time I would think of myself, of my whole body, as an ear.

The dictionary also invites a playful reading. It challenges anyone to sit down with it in an idle moment. There are worse ways to kill time.

What's really interesting about that is that a lot of these words that were incendiary in their time now seem almost harmless and laughable, because they have this archaic quality.

Music: breathing of statues. Perhaps: silence of paintings. You language where all language ends. You time standing vertically on the motion of mortal hearts.

One of the most powerful devices is to distort time, to go from human time to atomic time, geologic time. Sometimes you can actually accomplish that, with one unexpected word choice.

Language is, without a doubt, the most momentous and at the same time the most mysterious product of the human mind.

There's something in the German language that makes you feel like you're getting a hug and a backstab at the same time.

The number of lines of code a programmer can write in a fixed period of time is the same independent of the language used.

My first months in Sofia were a time of intense disorientation: I had never been to that part of the world before; I could barely speak the language; everything seemed strange to me.

I am very sorry, but I cannot learn languages. I have tried hard, only to find that men of ordinary capacity can learn Sanskrit in less time that it takes me to buy a German Dictionary

That you've got to do anything that you feel is precious. I especially believe that about cultures and languages. You've got to be really conscious because time is running out.

We seem but to linger in manhood to tell the dreams of our childhood, and they vanish out of memory ere we learn the language.

Words are not in the power of men; men are in the power of words. Every time we open our mouths, a thousand dead men speak through us.

When I'm on TV, I'm often talking to a conservative host. I may have another conservative arguing with me. You've got very limited time, and you're using 'sound-bite' type language.

It is an agreeable and yet a painful sense of novelty to stand for the first time in the midst of a people whose language and manners are different from one's own.

One of the most important and fascinating of all computer languages is Lisp (standing for "List Processing"), which was invented by John McCarthy around the time Algol was invented.

It's difficult to act in a language that's not your own. It takes a long time to put your head around it and feel confident with it.

Those who are learning to compose and arrange their sentences with accuracy and order are learning, at the same time, to think with accuracy and order.