2,489 Quotes About Language

The written word is what distinguishes us from all other animal life forms on this earth.

Freedom, one of the most important words in any language.

Silence is the mother of all tongues

Das habe ich von meiner Großmutter gelernt: Daß man durch die Macht der Worte den Krieg nicht nur beginnen, sondern auch gewinnen kann.

To lose your own language was like forgetting your mother, and as sad, in a way.

Jerkish". That was the name of a language of 225 words, developed in Atlanta for mutual communications between humans and chimpanzees - and there was no doubt (...) that more and more unfortunate creatures would be able to talk to each other in jerkish. It occurred to me immediately that at last a language had been found in which the spirit of our age could speak, and because that language would spread rapidly from pole to pole, to the east and the west, it would be the language of the future.

Language is life and a true backbone of any society!

Political language … is designed to make lies sound truthful and murder respectable, and to give an appearance of solidity to pure wind. One cannot change this all in a moment, but one can at least change one’s own habits, and from time to time one can even, if one jeers loudly enough, send some worn-out and useless phrase – some jackboot, Achilles’ heel, hotbed, melting pot, acid test, veritable inferno or other lump of verbal refuse – into the dustbin where it belongs.

Don't you know how, in talking a foreign language, even fluently, one says half the time not what one wants to but what one can?