Common Language Quotes - Page 2

• No one sleeps in this room without the dream of a common language.

  Adrienne Rich

  Dream, Sleep, Rooms

  Adrienne Rich (2013). “The Dream of a Common Language: Poems 1974-1977”, p.9, W. W. Norton & Company

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• Woe to that nation whose literature is disturbed by the intervention of power. Because that is not just a violation against "freedom of print," it is the closing down of the heart of the nation, a slashing to pieces of its memory. The nation ceases to be mindful of itself, it is deprived of its spiritual unity, and despite a supposedly common language, compatriots suddenly cease to understand one another.

  Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn

  Spiritual, Memories, Heart

  Alexandr Solzhenitsyn's Nobel lecture in literature delivered only to the Swedish Academy, www.nobelprize.org. 1970.

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• In scientific matters there was a common language and one standard of values; in moral and political problems there were many. … Furthermore, in science there is a court of last resort, experiment, which is unavailable in human affairs.

  Emilio G. Segre

  Political, Matter, Lasts

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• You, my Brown Guard, will regard it as a matter of course that this German people should go only by the way which Providence ordained for it when it gave to Germans the common language. So we go forward with the profoundest faith in God into the future. Would that which we have achieved have been possible if Providence had not helped us?

  Adolf Hitler

  People, Atheism, Matter

  Adolf Hitler “The Speeches of Adolf Hitler, April 1922-August 1939: An English Translation of Representative Passages Arranged Under Subjects and Edited by Norman H. Baynes”

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• I shan't get free of my emotion by copying the tree faithfully, or by drawing its leaves one by one in the common language, but only after identifying myself with it.

  Henri Matisse

  Drawing, Tree, Copying

  Henri Matisse, Jack D. Flam (1995). “Matisse on Art”, p.149, Univ of California Press

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• There is nothing terribly difficult in the Bible - at least in a technical way. The Bible is written in street language, common language. Most of it was oral and spoken to illiterate people. They were the first ones to receive it. So when we make everything academic, we lose something.

  Eugene H. Peterson

  People, Way, Firsts

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• Growing up in a family of actors, what's great about it is that they're very supportive and they understand what it's like to be an actor - the rejections, the highs and lows... and having a common language with them is great because you have shorthand speech.

  Chris Pine

  Growing Up, Rejection, Supportive

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• I have for a long time felt that our society is becoming more and more fractured and divisive and that you could go a whole day without really talking to another person. If you give people a good book to talk about, you can build a community out of a diverse group. A common language grows out of it.

  Nancy Pearl

  Book, Talking, Long

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• When a mathematician engaged in investigating physical actions and results has arrived at his own conclusions, may they not be expressed in common language as fully, clearly, and definitely as in mathematical formulae? If so, would it not be a great boon to such as well to express them so -- translating them out of their hieroglyphics that we might also work upon them by experiment?

  Michael Faraday

  Words Of Wisdom, Hieroglyphics, May

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• I maintain that there is no common language or medium of understanding between people of education and without it - between those who judge of things from books or from their senses. Ignorance has so far the advantage over learning; for it can make an appeal to you from what you know; but you cannot re-act upon it through that which it is a perfect stranger to. Ignorance is, therefore, power.

  William Hazlitt

  Book, Ignorance, People

  William Hazlitt (2015). “Delphi Collected Works of William Hazlitt (Illustrated)”, p.2452, Delphi Classics

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• It doesn't happen very often that you get to work with some really good friends of yours and there's a common language between everyone, you don't have to explain what you're doing, you can just run with it. It makes it just so much easier and more relaxed.

  Elizabeth Perkins

  Running, Good Friend, Doing You

  "Elizabeth Perkins Talks K-9's for Must Love Dogs". MovieWeb Interview, movieweb.com. July 27, 2005.

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• Certain kinds of speed, flow, intensity, density of attacks, density of interaction... Music that concentrates on those qualities is, I think, easier achieved by free improvisation between people sharing a common attitude, a common language.

  Evan Parker

  Attitude, Thinking, People

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• Describing certain sounds, there's a common language that guitar players have.

  Joe Perry

  Player, Guitar, Sound

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• It is often asserted that discussion is only possible between people who have a common language and accept common basic assumptions. I think that this is a mistake. All that is needed is a readiness to learn from one's partner in the discussion, which includes a genuine wish to understand what he intends to say. If this readiness is there, the discussion wrighteous stupidityill be the more fruitful the more the partner's backgrounds differ.

  Karl Popper

  Mistake, Learning, Knowledge

  Karl Popper (2012). “In Search of a Better World: Lectures and Essays from Thirty Years”, p.158, Routledge

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• The United States, a land of immigrants from every corner of the world, has been strengthened and unified because its newcomers have historically chosen ultimately to forgo their native language for the English language. We have all benefited from the sharing of ideas, of cultures and beliefs, made possible by a common language. We have all enriched each other.

  S. I. Hayakawa

  Land, Native Language, Ideas

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• I want to say unequivocally that while I cherish every person who comes from anywhere, who comes here legally and seeks to pursue happiness, and I hope all of them decide to stay and become American citizens, but I want them to become American. And part of becoming American involved English. It is vital historically to assert and establish that English is the common language at the heart of our civilization.

  Newt Gingrich

  Heart, Civilization, Citizens

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• English, our common language, binds our diverse people.

  S. I. Hayakawa

  People, Common, Language

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• We are all American. If we believe that we are Americans, if we believe that what binds us together is what we have in common, then it must include the common language, and that common tongue is English.

  Ernest Istook

  Believe, Together, Tongue

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• The United States is enriched by many cultures, and united by a single common language.

  S. I. Hayakawa

  United States, Culture, Common

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• The Soviet Union came apart along ethnic lines. The most important factor in this breakup was the disinclination of Slavic Ukraine to continue under a regime dominated by Slavic Russia. Yugoslavia came apart also, beginning with a brutal clash between Serbia and Croatia, here again 'nations' with only the smallest differences in genealogy; with, indeed, practically a common language. Ethnic conflict does not require great differences; small will do.

  Daniel Patrick Moynihan

  Breakup, Russia, Ukraine

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• We understand … that what constitutes the dignity of a craft is that it creates a fellowship, that it binds men together and fashions for them a common language.

  Antoine de Saint-Exupery

  Fashion, Men, Together

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• I do feel like the hardest thing is to do something simple and tap into whatever remains of our common language rather than cultivating your own willfully esoteric vocabulary.

  David Longstreth

  Simple, Vocabulary, Esoteric

  "Dirty Projectors". Interview with Brandon Stosuy, pitchfork.com. July 2, 2012.

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• "The Dream of a Common Language" by Adrienne Rich. I carried it the entire hike. On my first night, when I felt like I was in too deep, I read the first poem out loud to myself over and over.

  Cheryl Strayed

  Dream, Night, Firsts

  Interview with Amy Sutherland, www.bostonglobe.com. March 2, 2013.

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• Though representatives of many ethnic groups came together in the United States, English became their common language. Apparently, this was a natural choice. One can imagine what would have happened if members of each nation moving to the U.S. had spoken only their own tongues and refused to learn English.

  Mikhail Gorbachev

  Moving, Choices, Together

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• I believe it is our values and our ideals that ultimately bind us together as a nation. But it is the English language which serves as the means by which we can communicate these values to those around us. Our common language, English, is that which unites us.

  Asa Hutchinson

  Believe, Mean, Together

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