Quotes About Language

You should never trust a man who has only one way to spell a word.

I have a tendency to trust translators, mainly because nobody does it for the money.

It seems to me that if there were any logic to our language, trust would be a four letter word.

That's not a lie, it's a terminological inexactitude.

You have to trust the words. They do not create anything more than themselves.

Personally I've never put much store by honesty- I mean how can you trust a word whose first letter you don't even pronounce

Political language... is designed to make lies sound truthful and murder respectable, and to give an appearance of solidity to pure wind.

Deconstruction insists not that truth is illusory but that it is institutional.

A finger points at the moon, but the moon is not at the tip of the finger. Words points at the truth, but the truth is not in words.

That language is an instrument of human reason, and not merely a medium for the expression of thought, is a truth generally admitted.

A tautology's truth is certain, a proposition's possible, a contradiction's impossible.

How often misused words generate misleading thoughts.

Any necessary truth, whether a priori or a posteriori, could not have turned out otherwise

The English are polite by telling lies. The Americans are polite by telling the truth.

Bullshit is a greater enemy of the truth than lies are.

Truth is a property of sentences, since sentences are dependent for their existence upon vocabularies, and since vocabularies are made by human beings, so are truths.

The language of truth is unadorned and always simple.

Words are not truth. Truth is like the moon, and words are like my finger. I can point to the moon with my finger, but my finger is not the moon. Do you need my finger to see the moon?

"True" resembles... a compliment paid to sentences that seem to be paying their way and that fit in with other sentences which are doing so.

Language is a tool for concealing the truth. If we could read each other's minds, this would be a horror show.

So mathematical truth prefers simple words since the language of truth is itself simple.

Euphemisms are unpleasant truths wearing diplomatic cologne.

By and large, language is a tool for concealing the truth.

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?