Quotes About Language

Words are like breath," she said. "You say them and they're gone. But writing traps them. You could write down stories, poems.

It is an interesting feature of the Chan tradition (and of all similar iconoclastic trends) that its radical language, aimed at debunking an orthodoxy, soon becomes the sign or emblem of a new orthodoxy.

Entre Ce que je pense, Ce que je veux dire, Ce que je crois dire, Ce que je dis, Ce que vous avez envie d'entendre, Ce que vous croyez entendre, Ce que vous entendez, Ce que vous avez envie de comprendre, Ce que vous croyez comprendre, Ce que vous comprenez... il y a dix possibilités qu'on ait des difficultés à communiquer. Mais essayons quand même...

Berg, Sophia may be a Greek name, but that is no reason for you to study your neighbor in a Greek lesson. Translate!

Everything is vague to a degree you do not realize till you have tried to make it precise.

A dog cannot relate his autobiography; however, eloquently he may bark, he cannot tell you that his parents were honest though poor.

The need of politeness is at its maximum in speaking with foreigners, and is so irksome as to be paralysing to those who are only accustomed to compatriots.

In the first place, there is no point whatever in being able to spell anything. Shakespeare and Milton could not spell; Marie Corelli and Alfred Austen could. Spelling is thought desirable partly for snobbish reasons, as an easy way of distinguishing the "educated" from the "uneducated"; partly, like correct clothes, as a part of herd domination; partly because the devotee of natural law feels pain in the spectacle of any sphere in which individual liberty remains.

First: never use a long word if a short word will do. Second: if you want to make a statement with a great many qualifications, put some of the qualifications in separate sentences. Third: do not let the beginning of your sentence lead the reader to an expectation which is contradicted by the end.

Grammar and ordinary language are bad guides to metaphysics. A great book might be written showing the influence of syntax on philosophy.

Intelligibility or precision: to combine the two is impossible.

Thus mathematics may be defined as the subject in which we never know what we are talking about, nor whether what we are saying is true.

I was made to learn Latin and Greek, but I resented it, being of opinion that it was silly to learn a language that was no longer spoken. I believe that all the little good I got from years of classical studies I could have got in adult life in a month.

A word is used correctly when the average hearer will be affected by it in the way intended. This is a psychological, not a literary, definition of correctness. The literary definition would substitute, for the average hearer, a person of high education living a long time ago; the purpose of this definition is to make it difficult to speak or write correctly.

In his philosophy, nothing is held to be quite true, and nothing quite false; what can be uttered has only a limited truth, and, since men must talk, we cannot blame them for not speaking the whole truth and nothing but the truth. The best we can do, according to Bradley, is to say things that are "not intellectually corrigible"—further progress is only possible through a synthesis of thought and feeling, which, when achieved, will lead to our saying nothing.

Every proposition which we can understand must be composed wholly of constituents with which we are acquainted.

I do not like mystical language, and yet I hardly know how to express what I mean without employing phrases that sound poetic rather than scientific.

What the above argument amounts to is that, whatever else may be in perpetual flux, the meanings of words must be fixed, at least for a time, since otherwise no assertion is definite, and no assertion is true rather than false. There must be something more or less constant, if discourse and knowledge are to be possible.

We are uttering a mere tautology if we mean by 'in the mind' the same as by 'before the mind', i.e. if we mean merely being apprehended by the mind.

I'm getting on pretty well with German, though I haven't arrived at the stage of finding it a reasonable medium for the expression of thought. I think the original couple who spoke it must have died rather soon after the Tower of Babel, leaving a rather pedantically-minded baby, who had learnt all the words of one syllable, and had to make up the long ones with them – at least how else can you account for such words as Handschule and be-ab-sichtigen? I

The above proposition is occasionally useful.

is clear that human knowledge must always be content to accept some terms as intelligible without definition

Texans didn't have the vocabulary God gave a groundhog.

Republican comes in the dictionary just after reptile and just above repugnant.