Uttering a word is like striking a note on the keyboard of the imagination.
—Ludwig Wittgenstein (1889–1951) Austrian-born British Philosopher
A man who is ignorant of foreign languages is ignorant of his own.
—Johann Wolfgang von Goethe (1749–1832) German Poet
As societies grow decadent, the language grows decadent, too. Words are used to disguise, not to illuminate, action: you liberate a city by destroying it. Words are to confuse, so that at election time people will solemnly vote against their own interests
—Gore Vidal (1925–48) American Novelist, Essayist, Journalist, Playwright
England and America are two countries separated by the same language.
—George Bernard Shaw (1856–1950) Irish Playwright
Language most shows a man; speak that I may see thee; it springs out of the most retired and inmost part of us.
—Ben Jonson (1572–1637) English Dramatist, Poet, Actor
Language is the pedigree of nations.
—Samuel Johnson (1709–84) British Essayist
Never resist a sentence you like, in which language takes its own pleasure and in which, after having abused it for so long, you are stupefied by its innocence.
—Jean Baudrillard (1929–2007) French Sociologist, Philosopher
Writing in English is the most ingenious torture ever devised for sins committed in previous lives. The English reading public explains the reason why.
—James Joyce (1882–1941) Irish Novelist, Poet
Every gift from a friend is a wish for your happiness.
—Richard Bach (b.1936) American Novelist, Aviator
Man invented language to satisfy his deep need to complain.
—Lily Tomlin (b.1939) American Comedy Actress
If we spoke a different language, we would perceive a somewhat different world.
—Ludwig Wittgenstein (1889–1951) Austrian-born British Philosopher
I’ve found that there are only two kinds that are any good: slang that has established itself in the language, and slang that you make up yourself. Everything else is apt to be passe before it gets into print.
—Raymond Chandler (1888–1959) American Novelist
We have really everything in common with America nowadays, except, of course, language.
—Oscar Wilde (1854–1900) Irish Poet, Playwright
Love has its own language, but marriage falls back on the local dialect.
—Russian Proverb
The living language is like a cowpath: it is the creation of the cows themselves, who, having created it, follow it or depart from it according to their whims or their needs. From daily use, the path undergoes change. A cow is under no obligation to stay
—E. B. White (1985–99) American Essayist, Humorist
To write or even speak English is not a science but an art. There are no reliable words. Whoever writes English is involved in a struggle that never lets up even for a sentence. He is struggling against vagueness, against obscurity, against the lure of the decorative adjective, against the encroachment of Latin and Greek, and, above all, against the worn-out phrases and dead metaphors with which the language is cluttered up.
—George Orwell (1903–50) English Novelist, Journalist
Language is the amber in which a thousand precious thoughts have been safely embedded and preserved. It has arrested ten thousand lightning-flashes of genius, which, unless thus fixed and arrested, might have been as bright, but would have also been as quickly passing and perishing as the lightning. Words convey the mental treasures of one period to the generations that follow; and laden with this, their precious freight, they sail safely across gulfs of time in which empires have suffered shipwreck, and the languages of common life have sunk into oblivion.
—Richard Chenevix Trench (1807–86) Irish Prelate, Philologist, Poet
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 Webster (1758–1843) American Lexicographer, Journalist, Author
The finest language is mostly made up of simple unimposing words.
—George Eliot (Mary Anne Evans) (1819–80) English Novelist
As advertising blather becomes the nation’s normal idiom, language becomes printed noise.
—George Will (b.1941) American Columnist, Journalist, Writer
Poetry should help, not only to refine the language of the time, but to prevent it from changing too rapidly.
—T. S. Eliot (1888–1965) American-born British Poet, Dramatist, Literary Critic
French is the language that turns dirt into romance.
—Stephen King (b.1947) American Novelist, Short-Story Writer, Screenwriter, Columnist, Film Director
I ascribe a basic importance to the phenomenon of language. To speak means to be in a position to use a certain syntax, to grasp the morphology of this or that language, but it means above all to assume a culture, to support the weight of a civilization.
—Frantz Fanon (1925–61) French-Martinique Psychoanalyst, Philosopher
Language is a part of our organism and no less complicated than it.
—Ludwig Wittgenstein (1889–1951) Austrian-born British Philosopher
English usage is sometimes more than mere taste, judgment and education—sometimes it’s sheer luck, like getting across the street.
—E. B. White (1985–99) American Essayist, Humorist
The learned fool writes his nonsense in better language than the unlearned, but it is still nonsense.
—Benjamin Franklin (1706–90) American Political Leader, Inventor, Diplomat
He who does not know foreign languages does not know anything about his own.
—Johann Wolfgang von Goethe (1749–1832) German Poet
Language exerts hidden power, like the moon on the tides.
—Rita Mae Brown (b.1944) American Writer, Feminist
Language is not only the vehicle of thought, it is a great and efficient instrument in thinking.
—Humphry Davy (1778–1829) British Chemist, Inventor
Language is a form of human reason, which has its internal logic of which man knows nothing.
—Claude Levi-Strauss (1908–2009) French Social Anthropologist, Philosopher
Dialect words are those terrible marks of the beast to the truly genteel.
—Thomas Hardy (1840–1928) English Novelist, Poet
Might, could, would—they are contemptible auxiliaries.
—George Eliot (Mary Anne Evans) (1819–80) English Novelist
Language is the Rubicon that divides man from beast.
—Max Muller (1823–1900) German-Born British Philologist, Orientalist
Poetry is all nouns and verbs.
—Marianne Moore (1887–1972) American Poet
Language is the apparel in which your thoughts parade before the public. Never clothe them in vulgar or shoddy attire.
—George W. Crane (1901–95) American Psychologist, Physician
Man knows that there are in the soul tints more bewildering, more numberless, and more nameless that the colors of an autumn forest….Yet he seriously believes that these things can every one of them , in all their tones and semi-tones, in all their blends and unions, be accurately represented by an arbitrary system of grunts and squeals. He believes that an ordinary civilized stockbroker can really produce out of his own inside noises which denote all the mysteries of memory and all the agonies of desire.
—G. K. Chesterton (1874–1936) English Journalist, Novelist, Essayist, Poet
The downtrodden, who are the great creators of slang.
—Anthony Burgess (1917–93) English Novelist, Critic, Composer
After all, when you come right down to it, how many people speak the same language even when they speak the same language?
—Russell Hoban (1925–2011) American Novelist, Children’s Writer
The word of man is the most durable of all material.
—Arthur Schopenhauer (1788–1860) German Philosopher
There is no such thing as the Queen’s English. The property has gone into the hands of a joint stock company and we own the bulk of the shares!
—Mark Twain (1835–1910) American Humorist
Language as well as the faculty of speech, was the immediate gift of God.
—Noah Webster (1758–1843) American Lexicographer, Journalist, Author
Mastery of language affords remarkable power.
—Frantz Fanon (1925–61) French-Martinique Psychoanalyst, Philosopher
You can’t write about people out of textbooks, and you can’t use jargon. You have to speak clearly and simply and purely in a language that a six-year-old child can understand; and yet have the meanings and the overtones of language, and the implications, that appeal to the highest intelligence.
—Katherine Anne Porter (1890–1980) American Short-Story Writer, Novelist
Thought is the blossom; language the bud; action the fruit behind it.
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–82) American Philosopher
It’s a strange world of language in which skating on thin ice can get you into hot water.
—Franklin P. Jones
The great enemy of clear language is insincerity. When there is a gap between one’s real and one’s declared aims, one turns, as it were, instinctively to long words and exhausted idioms, like a cuttlefish squirting our ink.
—George Orwell (1903–50) English Novelist, Journalist
The English language is nobody’s special property. It is the property of the imagination: it is the property of the language itself.
—Derek Walcott (1930–2017) West Indian Poet, Dramatist
Numbers constitute the only universal language.
—Nathanael West
It is a mass language only in the same sense that its baseball slang is born of baseball players. That is, it is a language which is being molded by writers to do delicate things and yet be within the grasp of superficially educated people. It is not a natural growth, much as its proletarian writers would like to think so. But compared with it at its best, English has reached the Alexandrian stage of formalism and decay.
—Raymond Chandler (1888–1959) American Novelist
All official institutions of language are repeating machines: school, sports, advertising, popular songs, news, all continually repeat the same structure, the same meaning, often the same words: the stereotype is a political fact, the major figure of ideology.
—Roland Barthes (1915–80) French Writer, Critic, Teacher