Language Quotes
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... one of the things the tyrant most cunningly engineers is the gross over-simplification of language, because propaganda requires that the minds of the collective respond primitively to slogans of incitement.
Geoffrey Hill
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We are studying the language in an effort to understand its impact on our existing agreements and consulting with experts for advice concerning its ultimate impact on the future of Major League Baseball in Washington. We are interested in reviewing the analysis of this legislation made by both the (District) Office of the Chief Financial Officer and that made by the Office of the Attorney General prior to reaching our conclusions.
Bob DuPuy
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The world is mental in some way that we do not yet understand, but that which we're edging toward understanding. And the world is made of language. I can't say that enough. Whenever we get into these discussions about reality, or effects in space and time, we are operating outside this assumption that the world is made of language.
Terence McKenna
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Vague and mysterious forms of speech, and abuse of language, have so long passed for mysteries of science; and hard or misapplied words with little or no meaning have, by prescription, such a right to be mistaken for deep learning and height of speculation, that it will not be easy to persuade either those who speak or those who hear them, that they are but the covers of ignorance and hindrance of true knowledge.
John Locke
Nazareth
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All these years there had been a Tupperware container of bad language in her head, and now she opened it and all those crisp, crunchy words were fresh and lovely, ready to be used.
Liane Moriarty
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Different persons growing up in the same language are like different bushes trimmed and trained to take the shape of identical elephants. The anatomical details of twigs and branches will fulfill the elephantine form differently from bush to bush, but the overall outward results are alike.
Willard Van Orman Quine
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We cut nature up, organize it into concepts, and ascribe significances as we do, largely because we are parties to an agreement to organize it in this way - an agreement that holds through our speech community and is codified in the patterns of our language.
Benjamin Lee Whorf
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I think that phrase is the most horrible phrase in the English language - 'I don't know.' It's terribly embarrassing.
Jim Morrison
The Doors
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...there were eighty or so people gathered to listen to this utter shit as though it were their daily language passing through the crucible of the human sprint and emerging purified, redeemed.
Ben Lerner
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Dig -- the mostly uncouth -- language of grace.
Geoffrey Hill
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Photography is a universal language, transcending the boundaries of race, politics, and nationality.
Arthur Rothstein
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A man walks down the street. It's a street in a strange world. Maybe it's the third world. Maybe it's his first time around. He doesn't speak the language. He holds no currency. He is a foreign man. He is surrounded by the sound, sound of cattle in the marketplace, scatterlings and orphanages. He looks around, around he sees angels in the architecture spinning in infinity and he says, "Amen" and "Hallelujah!
Paul Simon
Simon & Garfunkel
