Quotes About Language

As historian Barbara Tuchman once wrote, Israel is 'the only nation in the world that is governing itself in the same territory, under the same name, and with the same religion and same language as it did 3,000 years ago.

Why in the age of feminism do we still use the phrase "women and children"?

my war on commas. They are a pestilence. They must be stopped.

A pun is not bound by the laws which limit nicer wit. It is a pistol let off at the ear; not a feather to tickle the intellect.

Il re Luigi II? Beh, sottraendo Luigi XIV da Luigi XVI, si ha Luigi II! Ah, no? Diavolo! Mi pareva una risposta niente male!

But words are like bullets. Once they exit the barrel, it's impossible to bring them back.

Su lazda ar akmeniu galima sulaužyti kaulus, bet jei nori k? nors ?skaudinti...labai smarkiai, rinkis žodžius.

That which we cannot speak about, we must pass over in silence." At the time

Proving once again that writing is an amazing transaction, and that the most powerful thing ever is a word.

That which we cannot speak about, we must pass over in silence." At the time I had not read Wittgenstein

immeasurable power of our words.

Love has its own communication—one you can't prove in a courtroom, in a lab experiment, or on a doctor's chart. It's the language of the heart, and while it has never been transcribed, has no alphabet, and can't be heard or spoken by voice, it is used by every human on the planet. It is written on our souls, scripted by the finger of God, and we can hear, understand, and speak it with perfection long before we open our eyes for the first time.

In the same way that Morse code reduces written language to dots and dashes, the spoken version of the code reduces speech to just two vowel sounds. The key word here is two. Two types of blinks, two vowel sounds, two different anything, really, can with suitable combinations convey all types of information.

I tried not to show much interest in his story after the way he had dozed while I was telling mine. It didn't matter, because he paid no attention to other people anyway. He spoke conversational English to all the Mexicans along the way and never seemed to notice that they couldn't understand a word he said.

I have learnt the Hebrew blessing before eating bread;is there no blessing before reading Hebrew?

My language is the sum total of myself.

We think only in signs.

Beyond the formative effects of reading on the individuals composing society, the fact that they have read the same books gives them experiences and ideas in common. These constitute a kind of shorthand of ideas which helps make communication quicker and more efficient. That is what we mean when we say figuratively of another person, We speak the same language.

Language is the soul of intellect, and reading is the essential process by which that intellect is cultivated beyond the commonplace experiences of everyday life.

Nature speaks in equations.

The purpose of poetry is to return that which is familiar to its original strangeness.

Silence is the only language god speaks.

In their effort to divorce language and experience, deconstructionist critics remind me of middle-class parents who do not allow their children to play in the street.

Humans are just barely intelligent tool users; Darwinian evolutionary selection stopped when language and tool use converged, leaving the average hairy meme carrier sadly deficient in smarts.