2,489 Quotes About Language

As with . . . even the written word, the remote overview is one more wrenched perspective that developing civilization has glued, collagelike, to the once unified experience of life.

Falling in love with another human is terrifying. As our language insists, romantic love is always preceded by a fall, the necessity of losing control and potentially hurting yourself in the process of connecting with another

We have our own language. Christianese... We don't say 'He's out of his mind,' no, we say 'That's our youth pastor.

By claiming that our words are too hard to understand, the media perpetuates the idea that WE are too hard to understand, and suggests that there’s no point in trying.

My parents would not permit ugly language in the house, which was okay with me. I didn't want to learn German anyway.

You should never let a word control you, intimidate you, or make you uncomfortable, and that applies to people of all races. Intent is where insult lies, and hate. Not in language.

Why must we be so restricted by language, these ruined tongues! These twenty-six letters- how can that explain this agony? How could we ever endeavor to prove what we are here for- through such combinations? Death is just a word someone invented for what happens at the end of a person’s life. It’s only a word: if there was no word for it we wouldn’t be so worried!

Before you judge me as some kind of 'anything goes' language heathen, let me just say that I'm not against usage standards. I don't violate them when I want to sound like an educated person, for the same reason I don't wear a bikini to a funeral when I want to look like a respectful person. There are social conventions for the way we do lots of things, and it is to everyone's benefit to be familiar with them. But logic ain't got nothin' to do with it.

There's a grosser irony about Politically Correct English. This is that PCE purports to be the dialect of progressive reform but is in fact - in its Orwellian substitution of the euphemisms of social equality for social equality itself - of vastly more help to conservatives and the US status quo than traditional SNOOT prescriptions ever were.