2,489 Quotes About Language

16. Natural language carries a special kind of virtual energy. The categorical apparatus and the propositional structure of any language are constantly rebuilding the cognitive system of a person, his way of perceiving, imagining and expressing the world and what is happening in this world. Therefore, be careful with natural language when you start thinking in that language.

Because it equates tradition with prejudice, the left finds itself increasingly unable to converse with ordinary people in their common language

Simply put, slurs go out of style at the same time the underlying belief in them does.

If language is deprived of what is indirect in it, its nature approaches that of a scream or order. Friendliness and politeness are also based on the circuitous and indirect. The orientation of violence, by contrast, is towards directness.

Perhaps one of the reasons why revolutions have beenso few among the English-speaking peoples is because English is so matter-offact, so uninflammatory that the words needed to suspend the reason of rabblesare entirely lacking. The Romance languages, on the other hand, have not thisdisability, and the Slavonic languages seem to have been invented for the purposeof expressing or arousing the most intimate emotions without embarrassingeither oneself or ones hearers.

What language / do you speak at home? / What is this / flavor called? / How do you say it? / Where are the women?

It is no nation that we inhabit, but a language. Make no mistake; our native toungue is our true fatherland.

A desire to believe (despite all evidence to the contrary) that words are at bottom the names of things is what makes the translator’s mission seem so impossible.

Whoever writes in a foreign language must like a lover accommodate his mode of thinking to it. -- Whoever writes in his native language has the authority of a husband in his own house, if he is in command of it.