Foreign Language Quotes

• He who does not know foreign languages does not know anything about his own.

  Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

  Doe, Language, Knows

  16 Copy quote

• If you talk to a man in a language he understands, that goes to his head. If you talk to him in his language, that goes to his heart.

  Nelson Mandela

  Leadership, Travel, Crazy

  "Biography/Personal Quotes". www.imdb.com.

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• A man who is ignorant of foreign languages is also ignorant of his own language.

  Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

  Men, Ignorant, Language

  Johann Wolfgang von Goethe (1853). “Goethe's Opinions on the World, Mankind, Literature, Science, and Art”, p.112

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• All the children in the world, when they go to school, have the right to study in their mother tongue. But we go to school and run into literary Arabic as children. It sounds like a foreign language. The words for "house" or "table" or "lamp" are not the same as the words we use at home, and most of the other words are alien to children at school. Classical Arabic is one of the prisons of the Arab world.

  Hassan Blasim

  Mother, Running, Children

  Source: www.guernicamag.com

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• Language is not a genetic gift, it is a social gift. Learning a new language is becoming a member of the club -the community of speakers of that language.

  Frank Smith

  Learning, Community, Clubs

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• Learning a foreign language, and the culture that goes with it, is one of the most useful things we can do to broaden the empathy and imaginative sympathy and cultural outlook of children.

  Michael Gove

  Sympathy, Children, Empathy

  "Michael Gove proposes teaching foreign languages from age five" by Patrick Wintour and Nicholas Watt, www.theguardian.com. September 30, 2011.

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• Language is the road map of a culture. It tells you where its people come from and where they are going.

  Rita Mae Brown

  Inspiration, Learning, People

  Rita Mae Brown (2011). “Starting from Scratch: A Different Kind of Writers' Manual”, p.47, Bantam

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• You can never understand one language until you understand at least two.

  Geoffrey Willans

  Inspiration, Learning, German Language

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• Knowledge of languages is the doorway to wisdom.

  Roger Bacon

  Inspirational, Education, Wisdom

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• Math and science fields are not the only areas where we see the United States lagging behind. Less than 1 percent of American high school students study the critical foreign languages of Arabic, Chinese, Japanese, Korean or Russian, combined.

  Cathy McMorris Rodgers

  School, Math, Chinese

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• Learning another language is not only learning different words for the same things, but learning another way to think about things.

  Flora Lewis

  Learning, Thinking, German Language

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• If we spoke a different language, we would perceive a somewhat different world.

  Ludwig Wittgenstein

  Communication, Different, World

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• Language shapes the way we think, and determines what we can think about.

  Benjamin Lee Whorf

  Communication, Thinking, Shapes

  91 Copy quote

• Those who know nothing of foreign languages know nothing of their own.

  Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

  Travel, Communication, Inspiration

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• A special kind of beauty exists which is born in language, of language, and for language.

  Gaston Bachelard

  Beauty, Communication, Writing

  "Fragments of a Poetics of Fire (A Retrospective Glance at the Lifework of a Master of Books)". Book by Gaston Bachelard edited by Suzanne Bachelard, 1988.

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• Language is the blood of the soul into which thoughts run and out of which they grow.

  Oliver Wendell Holmes Sr.

  Running, Communication, Inspiration

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• A different language is a different vision of life.

  Federico Fellini

  Life, Work, Communication

  Federico Fellini, Bert Cardullo (2006). “Federico Fellini: Interviews”, p.180, Univ. Press of Mississippi

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• Americans who travel abroad for the first time are often shocked to discover that, despite all the progress that has been made in the last 30 years, many foreign people still speak in foreign languages

  Dave Barry

  Travel, Inspirational Life, Learning

  Dave Barry (2010). “Dave Barry's Greatest Hits”, p.259, Ballantine Books

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• Life is a foreign language; all men mispronounce it.

  Christopher Morley

  Life, Travel, Men

  Thunder on the Left ch. 14 (1925)

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• We don't just borrow words; on occasion, English has pursued other languages down alleyways to beat them unconscious and rifle their pockets for new vocabulary.

  Booker T. Washington

  Communication, Vocabulary, Pockets

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• I wanted to learn a few foreign languages, and therefore I had to go abroad.

  Ella Maillart

  Travel, Literature, Language

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• Parents should conduct their arguments in quiet, respectful tones, but in a foreign language. You'd be surprised what an inducement that is to the education of children.

  Judith Martin

  Children, Parent, Tone

  Judith Martin (1982). “Miss Manners' Guide to Excruciatingly Correct Behavior”, Scribner

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• Language is the only thing worth knowing even poorly.

  Kató Lomb

  Knowing, Language, Polyglots

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• He who speaks a bit of a foreign language has more delight in it than he who speaks it well; pleasure goes along with superficial knowledge.

  Friedrich Nietzsche

  Knowledge, Delight, Language

  Friedrich Wilhelm Nietzsche (1984). “Human, All Too Human: A Book for Free Spirits”, p.243, U of Nebraska Press

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• It's important to me to work in my own language now and then. I love English, but you can never learn to master a foreign language if you're not brought up with it

  Max von Sydow

  Important, Language, Now And Then

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