English Language Quotes - Page 11

• It's just incredible. When you're French, coming from a non-English language country, you don't even dream about Oscar recognition or nominations. It's just beyond the dream. It's something very, very special and unique. It's the highest recognition any filmmaker could dream of

  Michel Hazanavicius

  Dream, Country, Unique

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• The four most powerful words in the English language - please, thanks, sorry and why.

  Wendy Alexander

  Sorry, Powerful, Four

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• I love the English language just like I love all American things. But I confess that I don't feel confident using complex sentences or big words, hence my famous minimally expressive style - all the "gees" and laconic answers to interviewers. Most of all, I have developed listening as an art form.

  Andy Warhol

  Art, Style, Listening

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• English, no longer an English language, now grows from many roots.

  Salman Rushdie

  Roots, Language, Grows

  The Times (London), July 3, 1982.

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• Four. That's what I want you to remember. If you don't get your idea across in the first four minutes, you won't do it. Four sentences to a paragraph. Four letters to a word. The most important words in the English language all have four letters. Home. Love. Food. Land. Peace. . .I know peace has five letters, but any damn fool knows it should have four.

  Lyndon B. Johnson

  Home, Should Have, Land

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• I love vocal music, but I've had a hard time understanding myself through the English language. So it just seemed to me that if I relied solely on creating a voice out of the music, then I might be able to reach something more profound.

  Arca

  Hard Times, Voice, Creating

  Source: pitchfork.com

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• It was once argued that 'Starring Sylvester Stallone' were the three scariest words in the English language but until I saw Adam Sandler I'd always thought the three scariest words in the English language were 'starring Dan Aykroyd.'

  Joe Queenan

  Saws, Three, Language

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• Soundbite and slogan, strapline and headline, at every turn we meet hyperbole. The soaring inflation of the English language is more urgently in need of control than the economic variety.

  Trevor Nunn

  Needs, Language, Economic

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• I got a bit obsessed with the whole English language and was writing journals and poetry. I've always been intrigued about psychology and philosophy and how people's minds work.

  Lara Pulver

  Philosophy, Writing, People

  Source: collider.com

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• The English language is full of words that are just waiting to be misspelled, and the world is full of sticklers, ready to pounce.

  Mary Norris

  Waiting, World, Language

  Mary Norris (2015). “Between You & Me: Confessions of a Comma Queen”, p.18, W. W. Norton & Company

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• Englishmen must learn to be Brahmins, not banias.

  Mahatma Gandhi

  Language, Brahmins, Englishmen

  Mahatma Gandhi (1981). “Collected Works”

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• Civilization is not an incurable disease, but it should never be forgotten that the English people are at present afflicted by it.

  Mahatma Gandhi

  Civilization, People, Disease

  Mahatma Gandhi, Rudrangshu Mukherjee (1993). “The Penguin Gandhi Reader”, p.18, Penguin Books India

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• Non-co-operation is a movement intended to invite Englishmen to co-operate with us on honourable terms or retire from our land.

  Mahatma Gandhi

  Land, Movement, Language

  Mahatma Gandhi (1994). “Volume of prefaces”

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• Swaraj means, a state such that we can maintain our separate existence without the presence of the English.

  Mahatma Gandhi

  Mean, Language, States

  Mahatma Gandhi (2014). “Freedom's Battle: Being a Comprehensive Collection of Writings and Speeches on the Present Situation”, p.73, The Floating Press

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• However virile the English language may be, it can never become the language of the masses of India.

  Mahatma Gandhi

  India, May, Language

  Mahatma Gandhi (1981). “Collected Works”

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• A smattering of English is worse than useless; it is an unnecessary tax on our women.

  Mahatma Gandhi

  Useless, Language, Unnecessary

  Mahatma Gandhi (1965). “Collected Works”

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• Ram Mohan Roy would have been a greater reformer and Lokmanya Tilak a greater scholar if they had not to start with the handicap of having to think in English and transmit their thoughts chiefly in English.

  Mahatma Gandhi

  Thinking, Rams, Language

  Mahatma Gandhi (1947). “Teachings of Mahatma Gandhi”

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• It would be a sad day for India if it has to inherit the English scale and the English tastes so utterly unsuitable to the Indian environment.

  Mahatma Gandhi

  India, Would Be, Taste

  Mahatma Gandhi (1965). “Collected Works”

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• In the dark days and darker nights when England stood alone-and most men save Englishmen despaired of England's life-he [Churchill] mobilized the English language and sent it into battle.

  John F. Kennedy

  Dark, Night, Men

  Proclamation Conferring Honorary U.S. Citizenship on Sir Winston Churchill, delivered 9 April 1963, Rose Garden, The White House, Washington, D.C.

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• The three most dreaded words in the English language are 'negative cash flow'.

  David Tang

  Cash Flow, Negative, Three

  "Kate Reporting" by Lauren Milligan, www.vogue.co.uk. June 16, 2011.

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• "Very" is the most useless word in the English language and can always come out. More than useless, it is treacherous because it invariably weakens what it is intended to strengthen. For example, would you rather hear the mincing shallowness of "I love you very much" or the heart-slamming intensity of "I love you"?

  Florence King

  Love You, Writing, Heart

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• Psychobabble attempts to redefine the entire English language just to make a correct statement incorrect. Psychology is the study of why someone would try to do this.

  Criss Jami

  Psychology, Trying, Language

  Criss Jami (2015). “Killosophy”, p.94, Criss Jami

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• I used to hate England because they ruled my country but I am happy they gave us the game of cricket, which they can't play very well, and the English language, which I can't speak very well.

  Kapil Dev

  Country, Hate, Games

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• It's more than usually possible that I won't do a play again. But Skylight is one of the great plays in the English language. I was lucky enough to be a part of it at one point in its life, and it's a timely thing to deliver it again in the modern world.

  Bill Nighy

  Play, Lucky, World

  Interview with Sarah Crompton, www.telegraph.co.uk. June 10, 2014.

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• I remember one English teacher in the eighth grade, Florence Schrack, whose husband also taught at the high school. I thought what she said made sense, and she parsed sentences on the blackboard and gave me, I'd like to think, some sense of English grammar and that there is a grammar, that those commas serve a purpose and that a sentence has a logic, that you can break it down. I've tried not to forget those lessons, and to treat the English language with respect as a kind of intricate tool.

  John Updike

  Teacher, Husband, School

  "Two Pulitzer Prizes for Fiction". The Academy of Achievement interview, www.achievement.org. June 12, 2004.

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