English Language Quotes - Page 14

• One man's frankness is another man's vulgarity.

  Kevin Smith

  Men, Language, Vulgarity

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• The existing phrasebooks are inadequate. They are well enough as far as they go, but when you fall down and skin your leg they don't tell you what to say.

  Mark Twain

  Fall, Skins, Legs

  Mark Twain (2013). “Delphi Complete Works of Mark Twain (Illustrated)”, p.3305, Delphi Classics

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• If a language is corruptible, then a constitution written in that language is corruptible.

  Robert Breault

  Constitution, Language, Written

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• It is a safe rule to apply that, when a mathematical or philosophical author writes with a misty profundity, he is talking nonsense.

  Alfred North Whitehead

  Philosophical, Writing, Talking

  1911 Introduction to Mathematics.

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• Learning preserves the errors of the past, as well as its wisdom. For this reason, dictionaries are public dangers, although they are necessities.

  Alfred North Whitehead

  Past, Errors, Language

  Alfred North Whitehead (2014). “Science and Philosophy”, p.57, Open Road Media

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• You know, we have main English language parties, federalist parties, and traditionally the ones to watch would be the Conservatives, who form the government, and then the Liberals.

  Rick Mercer

  Party, Government, Watches

  "Rick Mercer, Hot On The Canadian Campaign Trail". "Weekend Edition" with Scott Simon, www.npr.org. April 23, 2011.

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• I feel that the English language will be able to carry the weight of my African experience. But it will have to be a new English, still in full communion with its ancestral home but altered to suit new African surroundings.

  Chinua Achebe

  Home, Weight, Able

  "Chinua Achebe: A life in writing" by Nicholas Wroe, www.theguardian.com. December 13, 2010.

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• In 1776, at the point of severance, except for an infusion of words from east coast Indian languages, the English language of North America was not in any radical way dissimilar from that of what the American settlers called the mother country.

  Robert Burchfield

  Mother, Country, America

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• At all periods of the [English] language it is difficult to assign a beginning date to most new words and meanings. They tend to slip into the language silently, and are placed in date order only when scholars subsequently get to work.

  Robert Burchfield

  Order, Language, Periods

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• I definitely wish to distinguish American poetry from British or other English language poetry.

  Diane Wakoski

  Wish, Language, British

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• No' is the second shortest word in the English language, but one of the hardest to say.

  Raymond Arroyo

  Language, Hardest

  "The Power of 'No'” by Raymond J. Arroyo, www.huffingtonpost.com. July 9, 2012.

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• Suddenly I was the man who got the part that every actor in the English language was trying to get. I was really scared. I had talked the talk, and now I had to walk the walk. For three days, I couldn't answer the phone.

  F. Murray Abraham

  Men, Phones, Trying

  Biography/Personal Quotes, www.imdb.com.

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• I revise constantly, as I go along and then again after I've finished a first draft. Few of my novels contain a single sentence that closely resembles the sentence I first set down. I just find that I have to keep zapping and zapping the English language until it starts to behave in some way that vaguely matches my intentions.

  Michael Cunningham

  Way, Firsts, Language

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• Please stop using the word "Negro."... We are the only human beings in the world with fifty-seven variety of complexions who are classed together as a single racial unit. Therefore, we are really truly colored people, and that is the only name in the English language which accurately describes us.

  Mary Church Terrell

  Names, Race, People

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• In one of the most brilliant papers in the English language Hume made it clear that what we speak of as 'causality' is nothing more than the phenomenon of repetition. When we mix sulphur with saltpeter and charcoal we always get gunpowder. This is true of every event subsumed by a causal law in other words, everything which can be called scientific knowledge. "It is custom which rules ," Hume said, and in that one sentence undermined both science and philosophy .

  Philip K. Dick

  Philosophy, Law, Gunpowder

  "To The High Castle: Philip K. Dick: A Life 1928-1962". Book by Gregg Rickman, 1989.

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• I've been in New York only a few days and I have learned only two words of your language: one is Swell, and the other is Lousy. ... 'It's swell to be with you and excuse, please, my lousy English!

  Vicki Baum

  New York, Two, Language

  Vicki Baum (1964). “It was all quite different: the memoirs of Vicki Baum”

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• America is not a nation of separation. All our citizens are Americans. The common denominator is our language. Our language is English. The glue that binds generation after generation is both our Constitution and our English language.

  James Traficant

  America, Glue, Generations

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• There is the English language and then there's the Trump language.

  David Brooks

  Language, Trump

  Source: www.pbs.org

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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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• 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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• With the requests of some he complied, and has published a discourse, delivered before the Society for recovering drowned persons, which may be justly pronounced one of the most beautiful and interesting sermons in the English language.

  John Strachan

  Beautiful, Interesting, May

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• I think that phrase is the most horrible phrase in the English language - 'I don't know.' It's terribly embarrassing.

  Jim Morrison

  Thinking, Phrases, Language

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• Let's not become so worried about not offending anybody that we lose the ability to distinguish between respect and paranoia.

  Larry King

  Offending, Language, Worried

  Larry King, Bill Gilbert (2007). “How to Talk to Anyone, Anytime, Anywhere: The Secrets of Good Communication”, p.105, Three Rivers Press

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• But it's very technical and you really have to work and work and work to crack it. It's about using your whole face, jaw and tongue in a totally different way. It was very interesting - I love the English language, which made it easier.

  Marion Cotillard

  Interesting, Different, Cracks

  "Public Enemies - Marion Cotillard interview". Interview with Rob Carnevale, www.indielondon.co.uk.

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• I love literature, the English language and storytelling. I also have thirty horses and seventy foxhounds to feed.

  Rita Mae Brown

  Horse, Literature, Language

  Interview with Janet Justs, ejournals.lib.vt.edu. November 6, 2003.

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