Selected language quotes

1. It is thus quite simply false that whereof one cannot speak (in the sense of 'there is nothing to say about it that specifies it and grants it separating properties'), thereof one must be silent. It must on the contrary be named.

2. It must be said that today, at the end of its semantic evolution, the word 'terrorist' is an intrinsically propagandistic term. It has no neutral readability. It dispenses with all reasoned examination of political situations, of their causes and consequences.

3. Language comes first. It's not that language grows out of consciousness, if you haven't got language, you can't be conscious.

4. In English every word can be verbed. Would that it were so in our programming languages.

5. I believe that at the end of the century the use of words and general educated opinion will have altered so much that one will be able to speak of machines thinking without expecting to be contradicted.

6. When the imagination sleeps, words are emptied of their meaning: a deaf population absent-mindedly registers the condemnation of a man. ... there is no other solution but to speak out and show the obscenity hidden under the verbal cloak.

7. It is amusing to discover, in the twentieth century, that the quarrels between two lovers, two mathematicians, two nations, two economic systems, usually assumed insoluble in a finite period should exhibit one mechanism, the semantic mechanism of identification - the discovery of which makes universal agreement possible, in mathematics and in life.

8. If words are not things, or maps are not the actual territory, then, obviously, the only possible link between the objective world and the linguistic world is found in structure, and structure alone.

9. Let us repeat the two crucial negative premises as established firmly by all human experience: (1) Words are not the things we are speaking about; and (2) There is no such thing as an object in absolute isolation.

10. Thus, we see that one of the obvious origins of human disagreement lies in the use of noises for words.

11. Every word, every image used for God is a distortion more than a description.

12. Terms like that, 'Humane Society,' are devised with people like me in mind, who don't care to dwell on what happens to the innocent.

13. One sometimes gets the impression that those intimidating words are there to keep us from understanding. That way, the scholars can appear Superior, and will not likely be suspected of Not Knowing Something.

14. I remain convinced that obstinate addiction to ordinary language in our private thoughts is one of the main obstacles to progress in philosophy.

15. Written words differ from spoken words in being material structures. A spoken word is a process in the physical world, having an essential time-order; a written word is a series of pieces of matter, having an essential space-order.

16. To understand a name you must be acquainted with the particular of which it is a name.

17. In a logically perfect language, there will be one word and no more for every simple object, and everything that is not simple will be expressed by a combination of words, by a combination derived, of course, from the words for the simple things that enter in, one word for each simple component.

18. By an object, I mean anything that we can think, i.e. anything we can talk about.

19. The music that of common speech but slanted so that each detail sounds unexpected as a sharp inserted in a simple scale.

20. I took an estimated two thousand years of high school French, and when I finally got to France, I discovered that I didn't know one single phrase that was actually useful in a real-life French situation.

21. Good music is very close to primitive language.

22. The English language is nobody's special property. It is the property of the imagination: it is the property of the language itself.

23. Space or science fiction has become a dialect for our time.

24. Children are game for anything. I throw them hard words, and they backhand them over the net. They love words that give them a hard time, provided they are in a context that absorbs their attention.

25. A very great part of the mischiefs that vex the world arises from words.

26. Language is one of the greatest gifts man has devised for himself. It ranks, alongside the discovery of fire and the wheel, as a major influence in making modern man what he is today.

27. Language is the memory of man. Without it he has no past, a paltry present, and an empty future. With it he can bring his dreams to life.

28. Learn your language well and command it well, and you will have the first component to life.

29. Where Nature's end of language is declin'd, And men talk only to conceal the mind.

30. One forgets words as one forgets names. One's vocabulary needs constant fertilizing or it will die.

31. Words should be an intense pleasure just as leather should be to a shoemaker.

32. Life's splendor forever lies in wait about each one of us in all its fullness, but veiled from view, deep down, invisible, far off. It is there, though, not hostile, not reluctant, not deaf. If you summon it by the right word, by its right name, it will come.

33. A young writer is easily tempted by the allusive and ethereal and ironic and reflective, but the declarative is at the bottom of most good writing.

34. The funniest line in English is 'Get it?' When you say that, everyone chortles.

35. I am a dreamer of words, of written words. I think I am reading; a word stops me. I leave the page. The syllables of the word begin to move around. Stressed accents begin to invert. The word abandons its meaning like an overload which is too heavy and prevents dreaming. Then words take on other meanings as if they had the right to be young. And the words wander away, looking in the nooks and crannies of vocabulary for new company, bad company.

36. The words of the world want to make sentences.

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

38. Soun is noght but air ybroken, And every speche that is spoken, Loud or privee, foul or fair, In his substaunce is but air; For as flaumbe is but lighted smoke, Right so soun is air ybroke.

39. The word morality, if we met it in the Bible, would surprise us as much as the word telephone or motor car.

40. The English have no respect for their language, and will not teach their children to speak it.

41. For example, in Year 1 that useless letter 'c' would be dropped to be replased either by 'k' or 's', and likewise 'x' would no longer be part of the alphabet. The only kase in which 'c' would be retained would be the 'ch' formation, which will be dealt with later. Year 2 might reform 'w' spelling, so that 'which' and 'one' would take the same konsonant, wile Year 3 might well abolish 'y' replasing it with 'i' and Iear 4 might fiks the 'g/j' anomali wonse and for all. Jenerally, then, the improvement would kontinue iear bai iear with Iear 5 doing awai with useless double konsonants, and Iears 6-12 or so modifaiing vowlz and the rimeining voist and unvoist konsonants. Bai Iear 15 or sou, it wud fainali bi posibl tu meik ius ov thi ridandant letez 'c', 'y' and 'x' - bai now jast a memori in the maindz ov ould doderez - tu riplais 'ch', 'sh', and 'th' rispektivli. Fainali, xen, aafte sam 20 iers ov orxogrefkl riform, wi wud hev a lojikl, kohirnt speling in ius xrewawt xe Ingliy-spiking werld.

42. Every word she writes is a lie, including and and the.

43. Her every tone is music's own, Like those of morning birds, And something more than melody Dwells ever in her words.

44. L'esprit de l'escalier

45. Alla parola 'comizio' d'ora innanzi prego di sostituire la parola 'raduno di propaganda'. Il comizio ci ricorda tempi superati per sempre.

46. Words calculated to catch everyone may catch no one.

47. But the [communist] authorities acquire from Marxism a splendid method and abounding phraseology to justify whatever piggery.

48. The first words of the inhabitats of Partgrad were offensive words.

49. The genius of democracies is seen not only in the great number of new words introduced but even more in the new ideas they express.

50. The last thing a political party gives up is its vocabulary.

51. It is no accident that an anagram of 'actors' is 'scrota'.

52. A precise language awaits a completed metaphysics.

53. Kol kabes sitas skuduras, as nekalbesiu.

54. Brain, n. An apparatus with which we think what we think.

55. In'ards, n. pl. The stomach, heart, soul, and other bowels.

56. Un-American, adj. Wicked, intolerable, heathenish.

57. White, adj. and n. Black.

58. 'Therefore' is a word the poet must not know.

59. It's a damn poor mind that can only think of one way to spell a word.

60. 'True creativity often starts where language ends.'

61. A man's face as a rule says more, and more interesting things, than his mouth, for it is a compendium of everything his mouth will ever say, in that it is the monogram of all this man's thoughts and aspirations.

62. For an author to write as he speaks is just as reprehensible as the opposite fault, to speak as he writes; for this gives a pedantic effect to what he says, and at the same time makes him hardly intelligible.

63. The chief objection that I have to Pantheism is that it says nothing. To call the world 'God' is not to explain it; it is only to enrich our language with a superfluous synonym for the word 'world'.

64. All of us encounter, at least once in our life, some individual who utters words that make us think forever. There are men whose phrases are oracles; who condense in one sentence the secrets of life; who blurt out an aphorism that forms a character or illustrates an existence.

65. Does the e-mail say it's about 'enlargement' - that might be spam.

66. That's one thing about travelling, man: You stay in hotels all the time. Anybody here stay in hotels on a regular basis? Can you help me with something - does 'Do Not Disturb' mean 'Knock Immediately' in Spanish?

67. Synergy is the only word in our language which identifies the meaning for which it stands. Since the word is unknown to the average public, as I have already pointed out, it is not at all surprising that synergy has not been included in the economic accounting of our wealth transactions or in assessing our common wealth capabilities.

68. What did he say had entered the world? - A Neevil - What's a Neevil? - No, he didn't say a Neevil, he said a weevil - Well, what's that? (ch. 10)

69. Our language is the reflection of ourselves. A language is an exact reflection of the character and growth of its speakers.

70. They make me laugh with their 'Rubicon': 'Rubicon', 'Rubicon', what does it mean ?

71. Language is the net that holds thought trapped within a particular culture. But if one could only strike the ball with sufficient force, with perfect timing, it would perhaps break through the netting, continue on its course, never fall to earth, but go into orbit around the world.

72. 'Do you like Kipling?' 'I don't know, you naughty boy, I've never kippled.'

73. ''Isaiah' - what a funny name for a teddy bear!' 'Well, you see one eye's 'igher than the other.'

74. ''Is the hotel Marge? It has to be Marge. I want atmosphere.' Marge is Anna-Louise's word describing sad, 1950s-ish diner-type places where the waitresses are named Marge.'

75. Language is such a technology.

76. 'What do lesbians have against capitalized letters?'

77. Sam I am I am Sam I am Sam Sam I am.

78. Love is indescribable and unconditional. I could tell you a thousand things that it is not, but not one that it is. Either you have it or you haven't; there's no proof of it.

79. I am actually a large piece of cheese. (1953)

80. 'Yes, I like my coffee hot and strong : Like I like my women: hot and ..strong : with a spoon in them.'

81. This bloke who pinned a note on a door, saying 'Hang on a minute!' But in German, so: 'Ein minuten bitte! Ich habe eine kleinen problemo avec diese religiones.' [pause] He was from everywhere.

82. 'Two languages in one head? No one can live at that speed! Good Lord man, you're asking the impossible!' 'But, the Dutch speak four languages and smoke marijuana!' 'Well : yes, but they're cheating! Everyone knows that marijuana is a drug enhancement that helps you on track and field to come last in a team of eight million : eight million other runners who are all dead.'

83. Mais, la souris est en dessous la table, le chat est sur la chaise et le singe est : est : le singe est disparu!

84. The European Union: five hundred million people, two hundred languages - no one's got a clue what they're saying to each other!

85. 'Danger' could be my middle name : but it's 'John'.

86. Armageddon is Australian for 'Armageddon outta here!'

87. Religion and philosophy, philosophy and religion - they're two words which are both : different. In spelling.

88. She said, 'Spell 'ant'', and I wrote out the entire alphabet. She said, 'That doesn't spell 'ant'', and I said, 'It's in there somewhere! There's the 'A', there's the 'N', there's the 'T' - the rest are silent!'

89. These are not implants, they're nice and squidgy, but they're not... they're ims, but they're not planted. They're just ims. Just your regular common or house garden ims.

90. Poets that lasting marble seek Must come in Latin or in Greek.

91. Under the tropic is our language spoke, And part of Flanders hath receiv'd our yoke.

92. You know what I hate? Indian givers... no, I take that back.

93. The guy hammering on a roof called me a paranoid little weirdo... in Morse code.

94. Oh words, what crimes are committed in your name!

95. A phrase begins life as a literary expression; its felicity leads to its lazy repetition; and repetition soon establishes it as a legal formula, undiscriminatingly used to express different and sometimes contradictory ideas.

96. All our work, our whole life is a matter of semantics, because words are the tools with which we work, the material out of which laws are made, out of which the Constitution was written. Everything depends on our understanding of them.

97. I believe that saying a thing is to keep its virtues and take away its terror.

98. Civilization consists in giving something an unfitting name, then dream about the result. And indeed the false name and the real dream create a new reality. The object really becomes another, because we turned it into another one. We manufacture realities.

99. My homeland is the portuguese language.

100. Yes, when I was here the first word of the alma mater was 'Men:Men of Dartmouth, give a rouse:' Well, now the first word is 'Dear.' Some things change for the better.