Quotes About Language

Indeed, the very word "zero" has Indian origins: The Indian word for zero was sunya, meaning "empty," which the Arabs turned into sifr. Western scholars Latinized this into zephirus, the root of our zero.

words are just words. Some are better than others, but only because they are better at explaining what you mean.

gentlemen's clubs—now there was a ridiculous euphemism

Curses and foul language!

Where else, but from the industrialized world, did the suicide hijackers learn that the huge explosions and death above a city skyline are a peculiar and effective form of communication? They have mastered the language.

What is at work in this report is the reduction of language to code. Cliches, coined by the state, become the only acceptable vocabulary. Everyone knows what to say and how to respond. It is scripted. Vocabulary shrinks so that the tyranny of nationalist rhetoric leaves people sputtering state-sanctioned slogans.

As long as personal, violent catharsis masquerades as acts of resistance, the corporate state is secure. Indeed, the corporate state welcomes this violence because violence is a language it can speak with a proficiency and ruthlessness that none of these groups can match.

The ability to amplify lies, to repeat them and have surrogates repeat them in endless loops of news cycles, gives lies and mythical narratives the aura of uncontested truth. We become trapped in the linguistic prison of incessant repetition. We are fed words and phrases like war on terror or pro-life or change, and within these narrow parameters, all complex thought, ambiguity, and self-criticism vanish.

Paine knew liberty was intimately connected with language. And he knew that those who seek to monopolize power always use inaccessible and specialized jargon to exclude the average citizen. Paine broke these chains.

If you listen to a language for 15 minutes, you know the rhythm and song.

I just love language. I mean, I love it. I love stage directions. Any opportunity to write. I hadn't written in so long, I get very crazy and miserable. I - it's like not seeing my kids: I can't do it for very long.

I think quite a misguided literary culture has grown up in the 20th century that says a book has to have a seriousness of purpose and a seriousness of language.

I've been missing Japanese literature so much of late.

It is always a mistake to be plain-spoken.

Melodrama and melodramatic are not the same thing, and often people make the mistake of confusing the two.

Make no mistake. Canada is not a bilingual country. In fact it is less bilingual today than it has ever been.

I think it is a mistake to identify a movie according to its language, as if movies were literature.

I subconsciously mimic whomever I'm talking to, so I've been mistaken for a Canadian, a South American, and somebody from the West Country.

Positive, adj.: Mistaken at the top of one's voice.

You always risk people misunderstanding you when you say anything.

Not only the entire ability to think rests on language... but language is also the crux of the misunderstanding of reason with itself.

We misuse language and talk about the 'ascent' of man. We understand the scientific basis for the interrelatedness of life, but our ego hasn't caught up yet.

I don't think words always lead to meaning, but the things you can create with them are still pretty amazing. I've been really into Joni Mitchell, for example, but I've also been into some studio stuff, like Bjork.

Because it was my first time acting in English, everyone on set was difficult to understand. It was a mix of Scottish, Irish, British and American English. To understand a Scottish accent or an Irish accent was so hard.