Language Quotes

I have a prejudice against people who print things in a foreign language and add no translation. When I am the reader, and the other considers me able to do the translating myself, he pays me the quite a nice compliment - - But if he would do the translating for me I would try to get along without the compliment. A Tramp Abroad, 1880.

Mark Twain

Slang is a language that rolls up its sleeves, spits on its hands and goes to work.

Carl Sandburg, New York Times Feb. 13, 1959

I personally think we developed language because of our deep need to complain.

Lily Tomlin

Think like a wise man but communicate in the language of the people.

William Butler Yeats

The leader has to be practical and a realist, yet must talk the language of the visionary and the idealist.

Eric Hoffe

I personally think we developed language because of our deep inner need to complain.

Jane Wagne

As was his language so was his life.

Seneca

Mathematicians are like Frenchmen whatever you say to them they translate into their own language and forthwith it is something entirely different.

Johann von Goethe

We are armed with language adequate to describe each leaf of the filed, but not to describe human character.

Henry David Thoreau

The English have no respect for their language, and will not teach their children to speak it.

George Bernard Shaw, Pygmalion (1916) preface

Whoever has the greatest command of the language, holds the power.

Susan Johnson

I am is reportedly the shortest sentence in the English language. Could it be that I do is the longest sentence?

George Carlin

Man invented language to satisfy his deep need to complain.

Lily Tomlin and Jane Wagne

If the English language made any sense, a catastrophe would be an apostrophe with fur.

Doug Larson

England and America are two countries seperated by the same language.

George Bernard Shaw

Meditation is the tongue of the soul and the language of our spirit.

Jeremy Taylo

The structure of language determines not only thought, but reality itself.

Noam Chomsky, Ruth Anshen, Biography of an Idea (Mt. Kisco, NY: Moyer Bell Limited, 1986), pg. 196

There is no more difficult art to acquire than the art of observation, and for some men it is quite as difficult to record an observation in brief and plain language.

William Osle

Yes, we are all different. Different customs, different foods, different mannerisms, different languages, but not so different that we cannot get along with one another. If we will disagree without being disagreeable.

J. Martin Kohe