Quotes About Language

My maternal grandmother was not a philosopher, and she used to say that "words have no bones, but they can break bones." She knew what we all know: a word can cause more pain, more damage than the sharpest knife. As far as she was concerned, saying something and doing something were exactly the same.

Emigration is a kind of partial suicide. You don't die, but a great deal dies within you. Not least, the language.

Whoever is versed in the jargon does not have to say what he thinks, does not even have to think it properly. The jargon takes over this task.

To say "we" and mean "I" is one of the most recondite insults.

The impartiality of scientific language deprived what was powerless of the strength to make itself heard and merely provided the existing order with a neutral sign for itself. Such neutrality is more metaphysical than metaphysics.

Words of the jargon sound as if they said something higher than what they mean.

The jargon of authenticity ... is a trademark of societalized chosenness ... sub-language as superior language.

What is or is not the jargon is determined by whether the word is written in an intonation which places it transcendently in opposition to its own meaning; by whether the individual words are loaded at the expense of the sentence, its propositional force, and the thought content.

Fascism was not simply a conspiracy—although it was that—but it was something that came to life in the course of a powerful social development. Language provides it with a refuge. Within this refuge a smoldering evil expresses itself as though it were salvation.

Con respecto a lo negativo, el hecho de que no pueda hacer otra cosa que darle la razón me obliga a un cierto grado de laconismo.

Cuando se afirma y se subraya tal cosa sin que tal diferencia resulte de las palabras mismas, y cuando en lugar de ello, las palabras se refieren precisamente a lo que niegan tales afirmaciones, surge la sospecha de que en tales palabras se esconde precisamente lo negado. Por lo tanto, no hay que creer demasiado en esas afirmaciones.

Bir cümle bir öncekini, hakiki olmad???n? öne sürerek geçersiz k?larken, kendi de bir sonraki cümle taraf?ndan yalanlanmak üzeredir.

Falar de cultura foi sempre contra a cultura. O denominador "cultura" já contém, virtualmente, a tomada de posse, o enquadramento, a classificação que a cultura assume no reino da administração. Só a "administração" industrializada, radical e consequente, é plenamente adequada a esse conceito de cultura.

I stop listening when academics start mixing their Greek and Latin roots. That never leads anywhere productive.

In my world, history comes down to language and art. No one cares much about what battles were fought, who won them and who lost them - unless there is a painting, a play, a song or a poem that speaks of the event.

Having come to live in this age is as though one were to have entered another country. Learn its language or risk being left out.

If language is not correct, then what is said is not what is meant; if what is said is not what is meant, then what must be done remains undone; if this remains undone, morals and art will deteriorate; if justice goes astray, the people will be confused. Hence there must be no arbitrariness in what is said. This matters above everything. Confucius's

Linguistic and educational relativism helps to transform a class into a caste – a caste, almost, of Untouchables.

In 1927, Robert Graves published a little book called *Lars Porsena or the Future of Swearing and Improper Language*. He noted a recent decline in the use of foul language by the English, and predicted that this decline would continue indefinitely, until foul language had all but disappeared from the average man's vocabulary. History has not borne him out, to say the least: indeed, I have known economists make more accurate predictions.

Middle-class friends of mine were appalled to discover that the spelling being taught to their daughter in school was frequently wrong; they were even more appalled when they drew it to the attention of the school's head teacher and were told it did not matter, since the spelling was approximately right and everyone knew anyway what the misspelling meant.

Words are but the vague shadows of the volumes we mean. Little audible links, they are, chaining together great inaudible feelings and purposes.

How true it is that words are but the vague shadows of the volumes we mean. Little audible links, they are, chaining together great inaudible feelings and purposes.

People in general attach too much importance to words. They are under the illusion that talking effects great results. As a matter of fact, words are, as a rule, the shallowest portion of all the argument. They but dimly represent the great surging feelings and desires which lie behind. When the distraction of the tongue is removed, the heart listens.

How true it is that words are but the vague shadows of the volumes we mean.