Quotes About Language

Like Hitler, the president used the word lies to mean statements of fact not to his liking, and presented journalism as a campaign against himself. The president was on friendlier terms with the internet, his source for erroneous information that he passed on to millions of people.

Victor Klemperer, a literary scholar of Jewish origin, turned his philological training against Nazi propaganda. He noticed how Hitler's language rejected legitimate opposition: The people always meant some people and not others (the president uses the word in this way), encounters were always struggles (the president says winning), and any attempt by free people to understand the world in a different way was defamation of the leader (or, as the president puts it, libel). Politicians

Victor Klemperer, a literary scholar of Jewish origin, turned his philological training against Nazi propaganda. He noticed how Hitler's language rejected legitimate opposition: The people always meant some people and not others (the president uses the word in this way), encounters were always struggles (the president says winning), and any attempt by free people to understand the world in a different way was defamation of the leader (or, as the president puts it, libel).

Like Hitler, the President used the word lies to mean statements of fact not to his liking and presented journalism as a campaign against himself.

Be angry about the treacherous use of patriotic vocabulary.

philological training against Nazi propaganda. He noticed how Hitler's language rejected legitimate opposition: The people always meant some people and not others (the president uses the word in this way),

9 Be kind to our language. Avoid pronouncing the phrases everyone else does. Think up your own way of speaking, even if only to convey that thing you think everyone is saying. Make an effort to separate yourself from the internet. Read books.

When we repeat the same words and phrases that appear in the daily media, we accept the absence of a larger framework. To have such a framework requires more concepts, and having more concepts requires reading. So get the screens out of your room and surround yourself with books. The characters in Orwell's and Bradbury's books could not do this—but we still can.

More than half a century ago, the classic novels of totalitarianism warned of the domination of screens, the suppression of books, the narrowing of vocabularies,

When we repeat the same words and phrases that appear in the daily media, we accept the absence of a larger framework.

Be kind to our language: avoid pronouncing the phrases everyone else does. Think up your own way of speaking, even if only to convey that thing you think everyone is saying. Make an effort to separate yourself from the internet. Read books.

Politicians in our times feed their clichés to television, where even those who wish to disagree repeat them. Television purports to challenge political language by conveying images, but the secession from one frame to another can hinder a sense of resolution. Everything happens fast, but nothing actually happens. Each story on televised news is "breaking" until it is displaced by the next one. So we are hit by wave upon wave but never see the ocean.

The last Lithuanian grand duke who even knew the Lithuanian language died the year Columbus discovered America.

I chewed into the wreck of the world, into the neckbone of the past that pursued me. All the while, I moved toward extinction, bearing the burden of damage, language of the protector.

He [Shakespeare] was a wordsmith who loved to act and to see things from many points of view.(...) His genius lay in being able to see all sides of an argument.

What surprises historians of language is that Arabic has been able to preserve a morphology already exemplified by Hammurabi's code in the nineteenth or eighteenth century B.C., and a phonetic system which perpetuates, apart from one single sound, the very rich sound range borne witness to by the most ancient Semitic alphabets discovered.

Le persone sono come le parole. Da sole non significano niente, diventano belle se le metti bene insieme.

Pratico molto il sesso orale. nel senso che ne parlo tanto e non combino mai niente.

Who cut him?' Sam liked saying things like 'Who cut him?' It reminded him of being a kid and watching prison movies, which is probably why prisoners talked like that, too.

Unlike all the other signifiers, the Master Signifier does not fluctuate, providing a ground for the system of signification. Whereas all other signifiers acquire meaning through their relationship to other signifiers - we can identify a table because it isn't a chair, which isn't a couch, and so on - the Master Signifier refers only to itself.

It is not just the language that we are sharing, it is what we don't say. We are calling each other out of loneliness, across space, out of recognition of our beauty and power, and we are willing to go past the destruction and hurt we have done to reach each other.

C'est ridiule et bizarre a dire mais je suis persuade qu'il y a encore nombre de gens d'une certaine societe, en particulier des femmes, qui auraient vu disparaitre instantanement leur amour pour leurs amis, pour leur mari, pour leurs enfants, si seulement on leur avait interdi d'en parler en francais

Dragostea... Nu-mi place cuvântul ?sta, tocmai fiindc? are pentru mine o însemn?tate prea mare, neîinchipuit mai mare decît ai putea în?elege dumneata.

I would say to any young student today: Learn the language of the world. Get to know the language of the world because that's the way you're going to be able to communicate and have an impact.