Science and technology multiply around us. To an increasing extent they dictate the languages in which we speak and think. Either we use those languages, or we remain mute.
—J. G. Ballard (1930–2009) English Novelist, Short Story Writer
Language is like amber in its efficacy to circulate the electric spirit of truth, it is also like amber in embalming and preserving the relics of ancient wisdom, although one is not seldom puzzled to decipher its contents. Sometimes it locks up truths which were once well known, but which, in the course of ages, have passed out of sight and been forgotten. In other cases it holds the germs of truths, of which, though they were never plainly discerned, the genius of its framers caught a glimpse in a happy moment of divination.
—George Augustus Henry Sala (1828–95) British Journalist
Language is an archeological vehicle… the language we speak is a whole palimpsest of human effort and history.
—Russell Hoban (b.1925) American Children’s Books Writer, Novelist, Writer
Everything can change, but not the language that we carry inside us, like a world more exclusive and final than one’s mother’s womb.
—Italo Calvino (1923–85) Italian Journalist, Short Story Writer, Novelist, Essayist
Language as well as the faculty of speech, was the immediate gift of God.
—Noah Webster (1758–1843) American Lexicographer, Journalist, Author
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 (b.1925) American Children’s Books Writer, Novelist, Writer
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
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
A different language is a different vision of life.
—Federico Fellini (1920–93) Italian Filmmaker
Every gift from a friend is a wish for your happiness.
—Richard Bach (b.1936) American Novelist, Aviator
The limits of my language are the limits of my mind. All I know is what I have words for.
—Ludwig Wittgenstein (1889–1951) Austrian-born British Philosopher
But the fruit that can fall without shaking indeed is too mellow for me.
—Lady Mary Wortley Montagu (1689–1762) English Aristocrat, Poet, Novelist, Writer
In general, every country has the language it deserves.
—Jorge Luis Borges (1899–1986) Argentine Writer, Essayist, Poet
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 Anglican Clergyman, Religious Leader, Poet
Man invented language to satisfy his deep need to complain.
—Lily Tomlin
If everything is perfect, language is useless. This is true for animals. If animals don’t speak, it’s because everything’s perfect for them. If one day they start to speak, it will be because the world has lost a certain sort of perfection.
—Jean Baudrillard (1929–2007) French Sociologist, Philosopher
A special kind of beauty exists which is born in language, of language, and for language.
—Gaston Bachelard (1884–1962) French Philosopher, Psychoanalyst, Poet
Dance is the hidden language of the soul.
—Martha Graham (1894–1991) American Choreographer
Man acts as though he were the shaper and master of language, while in fact language remains the master of man.
—Martin Heidegger (1889–1976) German Existential Philosopher
The common faults of American language are an ambition of effect, a want of simplicity, and a turgid abuse of terms.
—James Fenimore Cooper (1789–1851) American Novelist
Language is the light of the mind.
—John Stuart Mill (1806–73) English Philosopher, Economist
Even if people are suspicious of the motives I think that learning and speaking two languages can only be a good thing for people.
—Stephen Harper