Language Quotes
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Most Americans have parents or grandparents who immigrated to this country, and we know the hardships they faced, from learning the language to dealing with prejudice.
Hank Johnson
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It is a general truth that students of language in every era try to colonize some or all of the other human sciences.
Ian Hacking
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Everyone, left to his own devices, forms an idea about what goes on in language which is very far from the truth.
Ferdinand de Saussure
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I want to go beyond the restrictions of language, religion and caste, and music is the only thing that allows me to do that.
A. R. Rahman
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The specifically human capacity for language enables children to provide for auxiliary tools in the solution of difficult tasks, to overcome impulsive action, to plan a solution to a problem prior to its execution, and to master their own behavior.
Lev Vygotsky
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The art of music, rather more daughter than imitator of nature, in her impressive and mysterious language minding and educating us, rouses directly our temper and rules us to the depths of our souls.
Carl Maria von Weber
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I spend my days kneeling in the muck of language, feeling around for gooey verbs, nouns, and modifiers that I can squash together to make a blob of a sentence that bears some likeness to reason and sense.
P. J. O'Rourke
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Linguistics will have to recognise laws operating universally in language, and in a strictly rational manner, separating general phenomena from those restricted to one branch of languages or another.
Ferdinand de Saussure
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Balancing my career between two industries has never been an issue. I started with a Telugu film and have a soft corner for the south industry, though I've grown up speaking Hindi. I don't think language can be a barrier when it comes to acting. And, since I come from a theatre background, I'm used to memorizing my lines.
Kajal Aggarwal
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Like a magpie, I am a scavenger of shiny things: fairy tales, dead languages, weird folk beliefs, fascinating religions, and more.
Laini Taylor
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Perl was designed to work more like a natural language. It's a little more complicated but there are more shortcuts, and once you learned the language, it's more expressive.
Larry Wall
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I think literary theory has not been terribly good for English studies in a while. It's not that theory isn't interesting, but it isn't about books, or the idiosyncrasies and complexities of putting language together.
A. S. Byatt
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Many Indians and Israelis seem set to elect, with untroubled consciences, those who speak the language of torturers and terrorists. More disturbingly, these corrupted democracies may increasingly prove the norm rather than the exception.
Pankaj Mishra
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Language is the house of Being. In its home man dwells. Those who think and those who create with words are the guardians of this home.
Martin Heidegger
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Intrinsic to the concept of a translator's fidelity to the effect and impact of the original is making the second version of the work as close to the first writer's intention as possible. A good translator's devotion to that goal is unwavering. But what never should be forgotten or overlooked is the obvious fact that what we read in a translation is the translator's writing. The inspiration is the original work, certainly, and thoughtful literary translators approach that work with great deference and respect, but the execution of the book in another language is the task of the translator, and that work should be judged and evaluated on its own terms. Still, most reviewers do not acknowledge the fact of translation except in the most perfunctory way, and a significant majority seem incapable of shedding light on the value of the translation or on how it reflects or illuminates the original.
Edith Grossman
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All living languages are promiscuous. We promiscuous speakers shamelessly shoplift words, plucking bons mots and phrases from any tempting language. We wear these words when we wish to be more formal, more elegant, more mysterious, worldly, precise, vague.
Rabih Alameddine
