Quotes About Language

Free scientific inquiry? The first adjective is redundant.

La palabra «Nosotros» es como cal derramada sobre los hombres, que los solidifica y endurece hasta hacerlos de piedra, y que aplasta todo bajo ella, y aquello que es blanco y aquello que es negro se pierden igualmente en su gris. Es la palabra mediante la cual los depravados roban la virtud de los buenos, mediante la cual los débiles roban el vigor de los fuertes, mediante la cual los necios roban la sabiduría de los sabios.

In January 2016, Cameron established a new fund for teaching English to Muslim women. He warned that those who failed language tests after a couple of years might be deported, because non–English speakers were "more susceptible to the extremist message coming from [ISIS]." The approach was something akin to integration at gunpoint: The more English you know, the less likely your kids will be to blow themselves up.

I searched modern fiction and poetry for clues to how we confronted and evaded reality, how we articulated our experience and turned to language not to revel ourselves but to hide. I was as sure then as I am now that by looking at contemporary Iranian fiction I could gain access to a real understanding of political and social events. (p289)

I wish wish I could steal the intricacies of language. But give my kids a break—remember, most of them were fed on Steinbeck's The Pearl.

It was as if he had come to mistrust words somehow. Words, and the sentiments words carried.

White folks. The term itself was uncomfortable in my mouth at first; I felt like a non-native speaker tripping over a difficult phrase.

I knew that in order to accomplish that, I needed to use language that spoke to all Americans and propose policies that touched everyone—a topflight education for every child, quality healthcare for every American. I needed to embrace white people as allies rather than impediments to change, and to couch the African American struggle in terms of a broader struggle for a fair, just, and generous society.

the evils of the Soviet system struck me as a variation on a broader human tragedy: The way abstract theories and rigid orthodoxy can curdle into repression. How readily we justify moral compromise and relinquish our freedoms. How power can corrupt and fear can compound and language can be debased. None of that was unique to Soviets or Communists, I thought; it was true for all of us.

O que quer dizer metalíngua senão tradução? Não se pode falar de uma língua senão em outra língua." Jacques Lacan, L'insu que sait de l'une-bévue s'aile à mourre

An informed public depends upon literacy and language: its good use, conception, comprehension and incorruptibility.

Mires a donde mires, te encuentras con la jerga empresarial: "incentivos", "valor añadido", "pasos adelante"; las mismas cadenas de mando, las mismas oficinas con iguales mesas y cubículos, la misma funcionalidad neutral, sin concesión alguna a la estética; la misma fe en la motivación y en el espíritu de equipo prefabricado.

We may imagine that the mind houses a singular self, an essence of I-ness, distinct from all other selves and consistent over time. But attend closely to your thoughts and you find they are thoroughly colonized by the thoughts of others, through language, culture, and mutual expectations. The answer to the question of what I am, or you are, requires some historical and geographical setting.

There is no 'cat language.' Painful as it is for us to admit, they don't need one!

Independence is a complex word in a foreign tongue. To resist occupation, whether you're a nation or merely a woman, you must understand the language of your enemy. Conquest and liberation and democrac and divorce are words that mean squat, basically, when you have hungry children and clothes to get out on the line and it looks like rain.

But still, I'd be darned if I was going to be one of those Americans who stomp around Italy barking commands in ever-louder English. I was going to be one of those Americans who traversed Italy with my forehead knit in concentration, divining wordsw from their Latin roots and answering by wedging French cognates into Italian pronunciations spliced onto a standard Spanish verb conjugation.

she considered a language that could carry nothing but love and simple truth.

His scent burst onto her brain like a rain of lights, causing her to know him perfectly. This is how moths speak to each other. The wrong words are impossible when there are no words.

we sang in church Tata Nzolo ! Which means Father in Heaven or Father of Fish Bait depending on just how you sing it, and that pretty well summed up my quandry.

Words were not just words, describing things a person could see. Even if most did not. Maybe they had to know a thing first, to see it.

I wish I could go visit them and talk in my own language, the English I knew before I grew thorns on my tongue.

My prior experience with young men was to hear them swear 'Christ almighty in the craphouse!' at any dress with too many buttons.

Which makes you wonder, are they really speaking real words or do little kids just start out naturally understanding each other before the prime of life sets in?

But are there books, books there are! Rattling words on the page calling my eyes to dance with them.