Quotes on Language

An artist must possess Nature. He must identify himself with her rhythm, by efforts that will prepare the mastery which will later enable him to express himself in his own language.

Love will find its way through all languages on its own.

How smooth must be the language of the whites, when they can make right look like wrong, and wrong like right.

I cannot find language of sufficient energy to convey my sense of the sacredness of private integrity.

Questions that pertain to the foundations of mathematics, although treated by many in recent times, still lack a satisfactory solution. Ambiguity of language is philosophy's main source of problems. That is why it is of the utmost importance to examine attentively the very words we use.

Human rights without responsibility, without a sense of decency, a sense of compassion, is not good enough for a society to flourish... We need to broaden our scope from the legalistic language to the language of the heart.

Grammar and logic free language from being at the mercy of the tone of voice. Grammar protects us against misunderstanding the sound of an uttered name; logic protects us against what we say have double meaning.

As ideas are preserved and communicated by means of words, it necessarily follows that we cannot improve the language of any science, without at the same time improving the science itself; neither can we, on the other hand, improve a science without improving the language or nomenclature which belongs to it.

No man means all he says, and yet very few say all they mean, for words are slippery and thought is viscous.

History is a people's memory, and without a memory, man is demoted to the lower animals.

There is no such thing as conversation. It is an illusion. There are intersecting monologues, that is all.

They have been at a great feast of languages, and stolen the scraps.

You have to know accounting. It's the language of practical business life. It was a very useful thing to deliver to civilization. I've heard it came to civilization through Venice which of course was once the great commercial power in the Mediterranean. However, double entry bookkeeping was a hell of an invention.

The psychology of a language which, in one way or another, is imposed upon one because of factors beyond one's control, is very different from the psychology of a language which one accepts of one's free will.

All of nature begins to whisper its secrets to us through its sounds. Sounds that were previously incomprehensible to our soul now become the meaningful language of nature.

Color! What a deep and mysterious language, the language of dreams.

Painting is the only universal language. All nature is creation's picture book. Painting alone can describe every thing which can be seen, and suggest every emotion which can be felt. Art reaches back into the babyhood of time, and is man's only lasting monument.

One does not inhabit a country; one inhabits a language. That is our country, our fatherland - and no other.

The style of an author should be the image of his mind, but the choice and command of language is the fruit of exercise.

In nine months, a group of children left alone with a computer in any language will reach the same standard as an office secretary in the West.

Language is only the instrument of science, and words are but the signs of ideas.