2,489 Quotes About Language

  • Author Rebecca Serle
  • Quote

    They say language comes better to people who are right-brained, but I'm not so sure. I think you need a certain looseness, a certain fluidity, to speak another language. To take all the words in your brain and turn them over, one by one, like stones - and find something else scrolled on the underside

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  • Author Jhumpa Lahiri
  • Quote

    Dopo aver trascorso un anno a Roma torno per un mese in America. Lì, subito, sento la mancanza dell'italiano. Non poterlo parlare e ascoltare ogni giorno mi angoscia. Quando vado nei ristoranti, nei negozi, in spiaggia, m'infastidisco: come mai la gente non parla italiano? Provo un sentimento di nostalgia struggente.

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  • Author Samuel Johnson
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    Sounds are too volatile and subtile for legal restraints; to enchain syllables, and to lash the wind, are equally the undertakings of pride, unwilling to measure its desires by its strength.

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  • Author Steven Pinker
  • Quote

    Outwitting and second-guessing an organism of approximately equal mental abilities with non-overlapping interests, at best, and malevolent intentions, at worst, makes formidable and ever-escalating demands on cognition. And a cognitive arms race clearly could propel a linguistic one.

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  • Author Martin Heidegger
  • Quote

    Humans act as though we were the creators and masters of language, while in fact language remains the master of us. Perhaps it is, before all else, humankind's distortion of this relation of dominance that drives our nature into alienation.

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