Explore Quotes on Language

Throughout the European Middle Ages and Renaissance, Latin was the language of learning and international communication. But in the early modern period, it was gradually displaced by French. By the eighteenth century, all the world - or at least all of Europe - aspired to be Parisian.

If Snowden really claims that his actions amounted to genuine civil disobedience, he should go to some English language bookstore in Moscow and get a copy of Henry David Thoreau's 'Civil Disobedience'.

Linguists have noticed that across the history of language some words start out as obvious, conscious metaphors and then slowly embed themselves in our daily usage in such a way that we're no longer aware that they are metaphors.

What's difficult to do in books for children is to create funny incidents. Funny images, funny language and any kind of taboo-breaking is not difficult.

I can't think of how many meetings I've sat through where people have explained that language has become less important because we now live in a visual age.

Few things are more painful than being a successful writer born in a small country with an impenetrable language.

My body language, it doesn't have anything to do with my coaches or my teammates.

I'm not tribal Labour. I'm a Liberal at heart. Different tradition, different language.

The language of all the interpretations, the translations, of the Judaic Bible and the Christian Bible, is musical, just wonderful. I read the Bible to myself; I'll take any translation, any edition, and read it aloud, just to hear the language, hear the rhythm, and remind myself how beautiful English is.

I promised myself that I would write as well as I can, tell the truth, not to tell everything I know, but to make sure that everything I tell is true, as I understand it. And to use the eloquence which my language affords me.

Music is the universal language; it is the soundtrack to our existence.

We all speak the same language, but when someone can speak eloquently or with poise, it's striking. I like that.

I could never learn to be totally fluent in any other language.

What would I do now, at age 48, if I were deported to a country that I have not seen in more than 40 years and whose language I no longer speak? How would I work? How would I survive?

Language is the friendliest of the things from which we cannot escape.

Both Trump and Putin use language primarily to communicate not facts or opinions but power: it's not what the words mean that matters but who says them and when. This makes it impossible to negotiate with them and very difficult for journalists to cover them.

Half of us are partly German! Half our language and culture, generally, in Anglo-Saxon terms, is German.

It is much easier to learn another language when you are young, enthusiastic and unembarrassed.

Open Graph is a language for structuring content and sharing that goes on in other apps, and we're continuing to build it out longer term. But we found we need to build more specific experiences around categories like music or movies. Where we've taken the time to build those specific experiences, stuff has gone quite well.

When you're actually talking over someone, it's as if you're just pontificating and they're not even there. And their body language - they're trying to get away from you. And if you're pontificating at an audience, and there's a break, the non-martyrs in the audience are not going to come back. I mean, they just want to get away from you.

Americans think cinema is about storytelling; I don't believe that. I think it's a language and everyone has to find their own way of speaking. It's not so much what you say as the way you say it.