Quotes About Language

Carved above the lintel were the words SCIENTIA POTESTAS EST. Science points east, I wondered? Science is portentous, yes? Science protests too much. Scientific potatoes rule. Had I stumbled on the lair of dangerous plant geneticists?

He called it potentia because there's nothing quite like Latin for disguising the fact you're making it up as you go along.

the rules of English grammar are largely an artificial construct with little or no bearing on the language as it is spoke.

What are my options?" she asked as I climbed into the driver's seat. "Meaningless euphemisms at one end and your full-on Unseen University at the other," I said. "The Unseen University is a bit like Hogwart's—" Stephanopoulos cut me off. "I have read some Terry Pratchett," she said.

Bollocks, I thought, or testiculi or possibly testiculos if we were using the accusative.

Cicero wouldn't approve of my writing style, but at least I pronounce his name with a hard C.

The word 'bollocks' is one of the most beautiful and flexible in the English language. It can be used to express emotional states ranging from ecstatic surprise to weary resignation in the face of inevitable disaster. And

The word 'bollocks' is one of the most beautiful and flexible in the English language. It can be used to express emotional states ranging from ecstatic surprise to weary resignation in the face of inevitable disaster.

Vanessa made a strange inarticulate sound common to Germans who've figured out how to start a sentence but don't know how it ends.

So Newton, like all good seventeenth-century intellectuals, wrote in Latin because that was the international language of science, philosophy and, I found out later, upmarket pornography.

the Ikea bed with an incomprehensible name,

I actually used the word "groovy" and she didn't even flinch, which was worrying on so many levels.

studying dead languages and

there's nothing quite like Latin for disguising the fact that you're making it up as you go along.

Speak, friend, and enter,

Classic grooming behavior, Dr. Walid told me later, something our fellow primates indulge in to maintain troop cohesion. Dr. Walid said human beings use language for the same purpose—which is why you find yourself talking total bollocks to people you meet at a bus stop and then wonder what the fuck did I do that for? As

I hate it when people listen to what I say in an inappropriate fashion.

Words are important he realized, especially in a nation ruled by its media.

More and more rules were added until people tried to standardise spelling in the eighteenth century - by which time the language was already an unruly adolescent of 1300 years, throwing letters all over the place.

A single message, no matter how apparently unambiguous, can mean more than one thing. I'm counting on it.

In the end, Harrington documented more than 130 languages, including Chemehuevi, Mohave, Serrano, Paiute, even K'iche'. Many of them are no longer spoken anywhere on this planet. They are preserved only in Harrington's careful records and perhaps in the fading childhood memories of the descendants of their last surviving speakers.

We prefer "survivor".' 'But this particular woman is dead,' Matlock pointed out. 'Yes.' 'So "survivor" isn't really an appropriate term.' 'I'm aware of that. What we need is a new term for survivors of assault who died.

The learned Fool writes his Nonsense in better Language than the unlearned; but still 'tis Nonsense.

Music is the last true voice of the human spirit. It can go beyond language, beyond age, and beyond color straight to the mind and heart of all people.