Language Quotes

The structure of language determines not only thought, but reality itself.

Noam Chomsky, Ruth Anshen, Biography of an Idea (Mt. Kisco, NY: Moyer Bell Limited, 1986), pg. 196

Thought is the blossom language the bud action the fruit behind it.

Ralph Waldo Emerson

Music is the soul of language.

Max Heindel

Own only what you can carry with you know language, know countries, know people. Let your memory be your travel bag.

Alexander Solzhenitsyn

We live at the level of our language. Whatever we can articulate we can imagine or explore. All you have to do to educate a child is leave him alone and teach him to read. The rest is brainwashing.

Ellen Gilcrist

The angels are so enamoured of the language that is spoken in heaven, that they will not distort their lips with the hissing and unmusical dialects of men, but speak their own, whether there be any who understand it or not.

Ralph Waldo Emerson

The limits of my language mean the limits of my world.

Ludwig Wittgenstein, Tractatus Logico - Philosophicus (1922)

Mathematicians are like Frenchmen: whatever you say to them they translate into their own language, and forthwith it is something entirely different.

Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

BASIC - A programming language. Related to certain social diseases in that those who have it will not admit it in polite company.

Anon.

I personally think we developed language because of our deep inner need to complain.

Jane Wagne

In Paris they simply stared when I spoke to them in French; I never did succeed in making those idiots understand their language.

Mark Twain

We are a spectacular, splendid manifestation of life. We have language.... We have affection We have genes for usefulness, and usefulness is about as close to a common goal of nature as I can guess at. And finally, and perhaps best of all, we have music.

Lewis Thomas, The Medusa and the Snail (1979)

Grammar and logic free language from being at the mercy of the tone of voice. Grammar protects us against misunderstanding the sound of an uttered name; logic protects us against what we say have double meaning.

Rosenstock - Huessy

The purpose of most computer languages is to lengthen your resume by a word and a comma.

Larry Wall

Reality is the only word in the English language that should always be used in quotes.

Unknown

Language is not an abstract construction of the learned, or of dictionary makers, but is something arising out of the work, needs, ties, joys, affections, tastes, of long generations of humanity, and has its bases broad and low, close to the ground.

Noah Webste

If you had the seeds of pestilence in your body you would not have a more active contagion that you have in your tempers, tastes, and principles. Simply to be in this world, whatever you are, is to exert an influence, compared with which mere language and persuasion are feeble.

Horace Bushnell

The leader has to be practical and a realist, yet must talk the language of the visionary and the idealist.

Eric Hoffe

No one has a finer command of language than the person who keeps his mouth shut.

Sam Rayburn