Language Quotes

• 

  Kindness is the language which the deaf can hear and the blind can see.

  Mark Twain

  Inspirational, Relationship, Positive

  Mark Twain (2015). “Bite-Size Twain: Wit and Wisdom from the Literary Legend”, p.18, St. Martin's Press

  1553 Copy quote

  Show source

• We think in language. The quality of our thoughts and ideas can only be as good as the quality of our language.

  George Carlin

  Thinking, Ideas, Quality

  46 Copy quote
• 

  Never make fun of someone who speaks broken English. It means they know another language.

  H. Jackson Brown, Jr.

  Fun, Mean, Broken

  101 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.

  283 Copy quote

  Show source

• Language is not only the vehicle of thought, it is a great and efficient instrument in thinking.

  Humphry Davy

  Thinking, Statistics, Instruments

  12 Copy quote

• If language is not correct, then what is said is not what is meant; if what is said is not what is meant, then what must be done remains undone; if this remains undone, morals and art will deteriorate; if justice goes astray, the people will stand about in helpless confusion. Hence there must be no arbitrariness in what is said. This matters above everything.

  Confucius

  Wisdom, Art, People

  11 Copy quote

• Without language, one cannot talk to people and understand them; one cannot share their hopes and aspirations, grasp their history, appreciate their poetry, or savor their songs.

  Nelson Mandela

  Inspiring, Song, Travel

  Nelson Mandela (1998). “In the Words of Nelson Mandela”, Birch Lane Press

  16 Copy quote

  Show source

• 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

  58 Copy quote

  Show source

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

  Christopher Morley

  Life, Travel, Men

  Thunder on the Left ch. 14 (1925)

  17 Copy quote

  Show source

• Language is the armory of the human mind, and at once contains the trophies of its past and the weapons of its future conquests.

  Samuel Taylor Coleridge

  Business, Communication, Past

  Samuel Taylor Coleridge (1840). “The Works of Samuel Taylor Coleridge, Prose and Verse: Complete in One Volume”, p.313

  49 Copy quote

  Show source

• 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

  50 Copy quote

• Because everyone uses language to talk, everyone thinks he can talk about language.

  Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

  Thinking, Use

  8 Copy quote

• If the Romans had been obliged to learn Latin, they would never have found time to conquer the world.

  Heinrich Heine

  Funny, Life, Education

  As quoted in "The Medical Record", No. 674, October 6, 1883.

  24 Copy quote

  Show source
• 

  Language is courage: the ability to conceive a thought, to speak it, and by doing so to make it true.

  Salman Rushdie

  Courage, Communication, Novelists

  Salman Rushdie (1989). “The Satanic Verses”, New York, N.Y. : Viking

  69 Copy quote

  Show source

• The process of translating comprises in its essence the whole secret of human understanding of the world and of social communication.

  Hans-Georg Gadamer

  Communication, Essence, Understanding

  18 Copy quote

• Language is a living thing. We can feel it changing. Parts of it become old: they drop off and are forgotten. New pieces bud out, spread into leaves, and become big branches, proliferating.

  Gilbert Highet

  Writing, Bud, Pieces

  7 Copy quote

• ...language is never innocent.

  Roland Barthes

  Innocent

  Roland Barthes (1984). “Writing degree zero ; &, Elements of semiology”, Random House (UK)

  70 Copy quote

  Show source

• The language of friendship is not words but meanings.

  Henry David Thoreau

  Friendship, Best Friend, True Love

  Henry David Thoreau (2012). “The Portable Thoreau”, p.114, Penguin

  71 Copy quote

  Show source

• 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

  102 Copy quote

  Show source

• Language is the dress of thought.

  Samuel Johnson

  Writing, Learning, Thinking

  Lives of the English Poets "Cowley" (1779 - 1781)

  20 Copy quote

  Show source

• I am always sorry when any language is lost, because languages are the pedigrees of nations.

  Samuel Johnson

  Sorry, Communication, Tongue

  In James Boswell 'Journal of a Tour to the Hebrides' (1785) 18 September 1773

  62 Copy quote

  Show source

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

  Ludwig Wittgenstein

  Communication, Different, World

  138 Copy quote

• Language is a city to the building of which every human being brought a stone.

  Ralph Waldo Emerson

  Communication, Cities, Language And Power

  Ralph Waldo Emerson (1875). “Letters and Social Aims”, p.160

  34 Copy quote

  Show source

• Language is the main instrument of man's refusal to accept the world as it is.

  George Steiner

  Men, World, Accepting

  George Steiner (1987). “George Steiner: A Reader”, p.398, Oxford University Press on Demand

  13 Copy quote

  Show source

• Language is an art, like brewing or baking.... It certainly is not a true instinct, for every language has to be learnt.

  Charles Darwin

  Art, Baking, Instinct

  Charles Darwin (1875). “The Descent of Man, and Selection in Relation to Sex”, p.86

  12 Copy quote

  Show source