Language quotes
2.4K quotes on this topic — from poets, philosophers, and thinkers across history.
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Browse quotes that often appear alongside language — connected by shared ideas and recurring themes.
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"To rescue from oblivion even a fragment of a language which men have used and which is in danger of being lost -that is to say, one of the elements, whether good or bad, which have shaped and complicated civilization -is to extend the scope of social observation and to serve civilization."
"We boast of our freedom, and we have your example for it. We talk the language we have always heard you speak."
"Irish is a leprechaun language."
"Name, no, nothing is nameable, tell, no, nothing can be told, what then, I don't know, I shouldn't have begun."
"Every word was once a poem. Every new relation is a new word."
"For all symbols are fluxional; all language is vehicular and transitive, and is good, as ferries and horses are, for conveyance, not as farms and houses are, for homestead."
"An answer in words is delusive; it is really no answer to the questions you ask."
"The language of the street is always strong."
"Among provocatives, the next best thing to good preaching is bad preaching. I have even more thoughts during or enduring it than at other times."
"The corruption of man is followed by the corruption of language."
"Culture is more and more consciously becoming a project carried out in the domain of language by, for instance, propaganda both governmental and commercial."
"Matter is simply a concept. The world is made of language."
"This unique strategy that the advanced primates created, the strategy of using language to bind time, is what the process we call 'civilization' has been all about."
"Obviously, it's some kind of freely commanded modality in the psyche with which we can have a relationship if we will but evolve a control language and a dialogue. And it remains mysterious."
"It seems to me that it is psyche in a way that has become occluded by the perverse development of language."
"It seems to me that right under the surface of human neurological organization is a mode shift of some sort that would make language beholdable."
"It is at this point that normal language gives up, and goes and has a drink."
"My programming language was solder."
"It must be powerful language if you canna make oout what the heel it’s goin’ on aboot!"
"It is impossible to translate poetry. Can you translate music?"
