English Language Quotes - Page 10

• My motto is "Unite now, today if you can; fight if you must. But in every case avoid British intervention."

  Mahatma Gandhi

  Fighting, Today, Language

  Mahatma Gandhi (1967). “Collected Works of Mahatma Gandhi”

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• I do feel that scripts get developed now to a point where they're sort of actor-proof. If the actor is not very good, the narrative still survives because it's all in the dialogue. Not to say there aren't great performances in English-language films, because there are every year, but the 1970s were awash with great performances, and I was wondering whether it had to do with the amount of space and the amount of responsibility given to the actors.

  Paul Bettany

  Responsibility, Years, Space

  Source: www.interviewmagazine.com

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• I came up with new leads for game stories by being observant and clever, by using the many gifts of the English language to intrigue and hook a reader.

  Dick Schaap

  Clever, Games, Hook

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• But this is predicated upon the man's becoming in very fact an American and nothing but an American. If he tries to keep segregated with men of his own origin and separated from the rest of America, then he isn't doing his part as an American. There can be no divided allegiance here. . . We have room for but one language here, and that is the English language, for we intend to see that the crucible turns our people out as Americans, of American nationality, and not as dwellers in a polyglot boarding-house; and we have room for but one soul loyalty, and that is loyalty to the American people.

  Theodore Roosevelt

  Loyalty, Men, America

  Theodore Roosevelt (1941). “Theodore Roosevelt Cyclopedia”

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• Ram Mohan Roy would have been a greater reformer and Lokmanya Tilak a greater scholar if they had not to start with the handicap of having to think in English and transmit their thoughts chiefly in English.

  Mahatma Gandhi

  Thinking, Rams, Language

  Mahatma Gandhi (1947). “Teachings of Mahatma Gandhi”

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• I am both a public and a private school boy myself, having always changed schools just as the class in English in the new school was taking up Silas Marner, with the result that it was the only book in the English language that I knew until I was eighteen--but, boy, did I know Silas Marner!

  Robert Benchley

  Book, School, Boys

  Robert Benchley (1976). “Chips Off the Old Benchley”, Amereon Limited

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• In the dark days and darker nights when England stood alone-and most men save Englishmen despaired of England's life-he [Churchill] mobilized the English language and sent it into battle.

  John F. Kennedy

  Dark, Night, Men

  Proclamation Conferring Honorary U.S. Citizenship on Sir Winston Churchill, delivered 9 April 1963, Rose Garden, The White House, Washington, D.C.

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• The four most powerful words in the English language - please, thanks, sorry and why.

  Wendy Alexander

  Sorry, Powerful, Four

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• So while you're getting ripped apart head to toe as you fall into a black hole, you will also extrude through the fabric of space and time, like toothpaste squeezed through a tube. To all the words in the English language that describe ways to die (e.g., homicide, suicide, electrocution, suffocation, starvation) we add the term spaghettification.

  Neil deGrasse Tyson

  Suicide, Fall, Science

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• I'm keen on making English language movies. English is still the global language and we can't change that.

  Bruno Zheng Wu

  Language, Can't Change, Stills

  Source: deadline.com

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• I love the English language just like I love all American things. But I confess that I don't feel confident using complex sentences or big words, hence my famous minimally expressive style - all the "gees" and laconic answers to interviewers. Most of all, I have developed listening as an art form.

  Andy Warhol

  Art, Style, Listening

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• English, no longer an English language, now grows from many roots.

  Salman Rushdie

  Roots, Language, Grows

  The Times (London), July 3, 1982.

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• Four. That's what I want you to remember. If you don't get your idea across in the first four minutes, you won't do it. Four sentences to a paragraph. Four letters to a word. The most important words in the English language all have four letters. Home. Love. Food. Land. Peace. . .I know peace has five letters, but any damn fool knows it should have four.

  Lyndon B. Johnson

  Home, Should Have, Land

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• I love vocal music, but I've had a hard time understanding myself through the English language. So it just seemed to me that if I relied solely on creating a voice out of the music, then I might be able to reach something more profound.

  Arca

  Hard Times, Voice, Creating

  Source: pitchfork.com

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• I remember one English teacher in the eighth grade, Florence Schrack, whose husband also taught at the high school. I thought what she said made sense, and she parsed sentences on the blackboard and gave me, I'd like to think, some sense of English grammar and that there is a grammar, that those commas serve a purpose and that a sentence has a logic, that you can break it down. I've tried not to forget those lessons, and to treat the English language with respect as a kind of intricate tool.

  John Updike

  Teacher, Husband, School

  "Two Pulitzer Prizes for Fiction". The Academy of Achievement interview, www.achievement.org. June 12, 2004.

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• I think the most dangerous word in the English language is 'should.' 'I should have done this.' Or 'I should do that.' 'Should' implies responsibility. It connotes demand. Which is just not the case. Life ebbs and flows.

  Chris Pine

  Responsibility, Thinking, Should Have

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• It was once argued that 'Starring Sylvester Stallone' were the three scariest words in the English language but until I saw Adam Sandler I'd always thought the three scariest words in the English language were 'starring Dan Aykroyd.'

  Joe Queenan

  Saws, Three, Language

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• James Joyce's English was based on the rhythm of the Irish language. He wrote things that shocked English language speakers but he was thinking in Gaelic. I've sung songs that if they were in English, would have been banned too. The psyche of the Irish language is completely different to the English-speaking world.

  Mairead Ni Mhaonaigh

  Song, Thinking, Different

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• Soundbite and slogan, strapline and headline, at every turn we meet hyperbole. The soaring inflation of the English language is more urgently in need of control than the economic variety.

  Trevor Nunn

  Needs, Language, Economic

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• I believe we are being dishonest with language minority groups if we tell them they can take full part in American life without learning the English language.

  S. I. Hayakawa

  Believe, Groups, Minorities

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• The English language is full of words that are just waiting to be misspelled, and the world is full of sticklers, ready to pounce.

  Mary Norris

  Waiting, World, Language

  Mary Norris (2015). “Between You & Me: Confessions of a Comma Queen”, p.18, W. W. Norton & Company

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• It's just incredible. When you're French, coming from a non-English language country, you don't even dream about Oscar recognition or nominations. It's just beyond the dream. It's something very, very special and unique. It's the highest recognition any filmmaker could dream of

  Michel Hazanavicius

  Dream, Country, Unique

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• It would be a sad day for India if it has to inherit the English scale and the English tastes so utterly unsuitable to the Indian environment.

  Mahatma Gandhi

  India, Would Be, Taste

  Mahatma Gandhi (1965). “Collected Works”

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• The English language lacks the words 'to mourn an absence.' For the loss of a parent, grandparent, spouse, child or friend we have all manner of words and phrases, some helpful, some not. Still, we are conditioned to say something, even if it is only 'I am sorry for your loss.' But for an absence, for someone who was never there at all, we are wordless to capture that particular emptiness. For those who deeply want children and are denied them, those missing babies hover like silent, ephemeral shadows over their lives. Who can describe the feel of a tiny hand that is never held?

  Laura Bush

  Baby, Children, Sorry

  Laura Bush (2010). “Spoken from the Heart”, p.105, Simon and Schuster

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• Culture is one of the two or three most complicated words in the English language.

  Raymond Williams

  Two, Three, Culture

  Raymond Williams (2014). “Keywords: A Vocabulary of Culture and Society”, p.49, Oxford University Press

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