Language Quotes - Page 25

• The most important word in the language of the working class is "solidarity."

  Harry Bridges

  Class, Unity, Important

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• In the lives of individuals and societies, language is a factor of greater importance than any other. For the study of language to remain solely the business of a handful of specialists would be a quite unacceptable state of affairs.

  Ferdinand de Saussure

  Would Be, Study, Affair

  Ferdinand de Saussure (2013). “Course in General Linguistics”, p.8, A&C Black

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• Language, the machine of the poet, is best fitted for his purpose in its rudest state. Nations, like individuals, first perceive, and then abstract. They advance from particular images to general terms. Hence the vocabulary of an enlightened society is philosophical, that of a half-civilized people is poetical.

  Thomas B. Macaulay

  Philosophical, Vocabulary, People

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• The common faults of American language are an ambition of effect, a want of simplicity, and a turgid abuse of terms.

  James F. Cooper

  Ambition, Simplicity, Abuse

  "The American Democrat: Or, Hints on the Social and Civic Relations of the United States of America". Book by James Fenimore Cooper, 1838.

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• If everything is perfect, language is useless. This is true for animals. If animals don't speak, it's because everything's perfect for them. If one day they start to speak, it will be because the world has lost a certain sort of perfection.

  Jean Baudrillard

  Animal, Perfect, One Day

  Jean Baudrillard (1990). “Cool Memories”, p.84, Verso

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• I like to be beholden to the great metropolitan English speech, the sea which receives tributaries from every region under heaven.

  Ralph Waldo Emerson

  Sea, Heaven, Speech

  Ralph Waldo Emerson (1960). “Journals and Miscellaneous Notebooks: 1841-1843”, p.357, Harvard University Press

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• Man, even man debased by the neocapitalism and pseudosocialism of our time, is a marvelous being because he sometimes speaks. Language is the mark, the sign, not of his fall but of his original innocence. Through the Word we may regain the lost kingdom and recover powers we possessed in the far-distant past.

  Octavio Paz

  Fall, Past, Men

  Octavio Paz (1973). “Alternating Current”, p.48, Arcade Publishing

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• He that uses many words for explaining any subject, doth, like the cuttlefish, hide himself for the most part in his own ink.

  John Ray

  Writing, Use, Using Words

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• There is no such thing as the Queen's English. The property has gone into the hands of a joint stock company and we own the bulk of the shares!

  Mark Twain

  Queens, Hands, Gone

  Following the Equator ch. 24, "Pudd'nhead Wilson's New Calendar" (1897)

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• The significance of language for the evolution of culture lies in this, that mankind set up in language a separate world beside the other world, a place it took to be so firmly set that, standing upon it, it could lift the rest of the world off its hinges and make itself master of it. To the extent that man has for long ages believed in the concepts and names of things as in aeternae veritates he has appropriated to himself that pride by which he raised himself above the animal: he really thought that in language he possessed knowledge of the world.

  Friedrich Nietzsche

  Lying, Pride, Animal

  Friedrich Nietzsche, R. J. Hollingdale (1996). “Nietzsche: Human, All Too Human: A Book for Free Spirits”, p.16, Cambridge University Press

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• It is useless to read Greek in translation; translators can but offer us a vague equivalent.

  Virginia Woolf

  Greek, Useless, Offers

  Virginia Woolf, Hermione Lee (2000). “A room of one's own and other essays”

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• The nation was founded and "dedicated," to use Lincoln's language in the "Gettysburg Address," to equality as a "self-evident truth." But this very principle of equality, as Lincoln also noted, was a "proposition." To make it a reality remained "the unfinished work" of Americans.

  Ronald Takaki

  Reality, Unfinished Work, Self

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• I am annoyed by individuals who are embarrassed by pauses in a conversation. To me, every conversational pause refreshes.

  George Sanders

  Communication, Annoyed, Individual

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• Part of what makes a language 'alive' is its constant evolution. I would hate to think Britain would ever emulate France, where they actually have a learned faculty whose job it is to attempt to prevent the incursion of foreign words into the language. I love editing Harry with Arthur Levine, my American editor-the differences between 'British English' (of which there must be at least 200 versions) and 'American English' (ditto!) are a source of constant interest and amusement to me.

  J. K. Rowling

  Wise, Witty, Jobs

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• Never throw mud. You may miss the mark, and you'll have dirty hands.

  Joseph Parker

  Dirty, Communication, Hands

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• In order to translate a sentence from English into French two things are necessary. First, we must understand thoroughly the English sentence. Second, we must be familiar with the forms of expression peculiar to the French language. The situation is very similar when we attempt to express in mathematical symbols a condition proposed in words. First, we must understand thoroughly the condition. Second, we must be familiar with the forms of mathematical expression.

  George Polya

  Expression, Order, Two

  George Pólya (1957). “How to solve it: a new aspect of mathematical method”

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• The psychology of a language which, in one way or another, is imposed upon one because of factors beyond one's control, is very different from the psychology of a language which one accepts of one's free will.

  Edward Sapir

  Psychology, Different, Way

  Edward Sapir, Pierre Swiggers (2008). “General Linguistics”, p.277, Walter de Gruyter

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• The general mental qualification necessary for scientific advancement is that which is usually denominated "common sense," though added to this, imagination, induction, and trained logic, either of common language or of mathematics, are important adjuncts.

  Joseph Henry

  Science, Common Sense, Imagination

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• Good writers define reality; bad ones merely restate it.

  Edward Albee

  Book, Writing, Reality

  Edward Albee (2009). “Stretching My Mind: The Collected Essays of Edward Albee”, p.48, Da Capo Press

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• How can diverse Americans become "one people"? I believe that one path is for us to pursue the study of the past that includes all of us, making all of us feel connected to one another as "we the people," working and living in a nation, founded and "dedicated" (to use Lincoln's language) to the "proposition" that "all men are created equal."

  Ronald Takaki

  Believe, Past, Men

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• Neo-Darwinian language and conceptual structure itself ensures scientific failure: Major questions posed by zoologists cannot be answered from inside the neo-Darwinian straitjacket. Such questions include, for example, 'How do new structures arise in evolution?' 'Why, given so much environmental change, is stasis so prevalent in evolution as seen in the fossil record?' 'How did one group of organisms or set of macromolecules evolve from another?' The importance of these questions is not at issue; it is just that neo-Darwinians, restricted by their resuppositions, cannot answer them.

  Lynn Margulis

  Issues, Environmental, Groups

  Lynn Margulis, Dorion Sagan (2013). “Slanted Truths: Essays on Gaia, Symbiosis and Evolution”, p.100, Springer Science & Business Media

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• There is no such thing as conversation. It is an illusion. There are intersecting monologues, that is all.

  Rebecca West

  Communication, Illusion, Conversation

  The Harsh Voice "There Is No Conversation" (1935)

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• There is a quiet humor in Yiddish and a gratitude for every day of life, every crumb of success, each encounter of love... In a figurative way, Yiddish is the wise and humble language of us all, the idiom of a frightened and hopeful humanity.

  Isaac Bashevis Singer

  Wise, Gratitude, Humble

  Isaac Bashevis Singer, Joseph C. Landis (1986). “Aspects of I.B. Singer”

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• Astrology is a language. If you understand this language, the sky speaks to you.

  Dane Rudhyar

  Sky, Astrology, Speak

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