Quotes About Language

words can never get at the truth.

Revelation and the nature of truth must be viewed in reference to the structure of language.

A room full of words that are nearly the truth but not quite, each note fluttering off the steam of its rose like a broken butterfly wing.

Words are often things also, and very precious, especially on the gravest occasions. Without "words," and the truth of things that is in them, what were we?

Yes, the mistrust of poetry has a long history, for a variety of reasons, but they all come down to sentiment and invention over fact and truth. Figurative language is suspicious.

A powerful enough metaphor grows its own truth.

The truth is always greater than the words we use to describe it.

Words are the least reliable purveyor of Truth.

Words are merely utterances: noises that stand for feelings, thoughts, and experience. They are symbols. Signs. Insignias. They are not Truth. They are not the real thing.

I don't entirely agree with the slogan "speaking truth to power."

The real truth about children is they don't speak the language very well. They're physically uncoordinated. And they are ignorant of our elaborate ideas about right and wrong.

Words are nets through which all truth escapes.

Observe how every truth and every error, each a thought of someone's mind, clothes itself with societies, houses, cities, language, ceremonies, newspapers

The language doesn't mean anything anymore, folks. Truth doesn't mean anything anymore.

Simple is the language of truth.

If we are not most careful with our thoughts and speech, the words we use will use us. Language has its own ethics, and one who communicates truth is like a bright light in the darkness.

The errors of definitions multiply themselves according as the reckoning proceeds; and lead men into absurdities, which at last they see but cannot avoid, without reckoning anew from the beginning.

I bring reason to your ears, and, in language as plain as ABC, hold up truth to your eyes.

We use so much bad language that it forms a barrier between ourselves and the truth.

After all, what is a lovely phrase? One that has mopped up as much Truth as it can hold.

...the taste of the finely-worded truth rolled upon the tongue as its thought is revolved in the mind.

The truth remains that, after adolescence has begun, "words, words, words," must constitute a large part, and an always larger part as life advances, of what the human being has to learn.

Far from being antecedent principles that animate the process, law, language, truth are but abstract names for its results.

The moral of the story was that if you can talk, it's better not to tell the truth.