Language is one component of the human cognitive capacity which happens to be fairly amenable to enquiry. So we know a good deal about that.

The higher a man stands, the more the word vulgar becomes unintelligible to him.

Words do two major things: They provide food for the mind and create light for understanding and awareness.

Short words are best and the old words when short are best of all.

Might, could, would – they are contemptible auxiliaries.

Everywhere the human soul stands between a hemisphere of light and another of darkness; on the confines of the two everlasting empires, necessity and free will.

The human brain is an incredible pattern-matching machine.

Facts are stubborn, but statistics are more pliable.

We are symbols, and inhabit symbols.

And poets, in my view, and I think the view of most people, do speak God’s language – it’s better, it’s finer, it’s language on a higher plane than ordinary people speak in their daily lives.

Human self-understanding changes with time, and so also human consciousness deepens.

The language of excitement is at best picturesque merely. You must be calm before you can utter oracles.

Words do not express thoughts very well. They always become a little different immediately after they are expressed, a little distorted, a little foolish.

As long as somebody finances you, can make a film and get it seen any place and in any language; then, hopefully, it’s a success.

The educated Southerner has no use for an ‚r‘, except at the beginning of a word.

I don’t believe in signing anything and everything that comes my way. I leave it to my agency to help narrow them down for me, but I do research it myself before signing. The image of the brand and its ambassadors go hand in hand.

Language ought to be the joint creation of poets and manual workers.

I was terrible in English. I couldn’t stand the subject. It seemed to me ridiculous to worry about whether you spelled something wrong or not, because English spelling is just a human convention – it has nothing to do with anything real, anything from nature.

Suit the action to the word, the word to the action.

Most of the fundamental ideas of science are essentially simple, and may, as a rule, be expressed in a language comprehensible to everyone.

Words are loaded pistols.

I don’t do research. I never have.

I guess the toughest things in translations are word play, which can never be reproduced exactly.

All slang is metaphor, and all metaphor is poetry.

When I was researching my book ‚The 33 Strategies of War‘, I studied Napoleon extensively and I found myself wanting to ask Napoleon questions about things he did, and if was I interpreting his actions correctly.

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.

Just as the humble, unassuming, assenting ‚O.K.‘ has deposed the more affirmative ‚Yes,‘ so the little cringe and hesitation and approximation of ‚like‘ are a help to young people who are struggling to negotiate the shoals and rapids of ethnic identity, the street, and general correctness.

Even with cameras being very cheap, one thing that researchers noticed was that you look really bad in a videoconference image because the lighting is bad and you get shadows and things.

Of course, there are those critics – New York critics as a rule – who say, ‚Well, Maya Angelou has a new book out and of course it’s good but then she’s a natural writer.‘ Those are the ones I want to grab by the throat and wrestle to the floor because it takes me forever to get it to sing. I work at the language.

I grew up cursing a lot. It felt natural. My parents told me to stop.

Words are but the signs of ideas.

The way I talk is bizarre.

Every legend, moreover, contains its residuum of truth, and the root function of language is to control the universe by describing it.

Language is an intrinsic part of who we are and what has, for good or evil, happened to us.

I would say that jazz is my own language.

Many badly needed goals, like fusion and cancer cure, would be achieved much sooner if we invested more.

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

Human language appears to be a unique phenomenon, without significant analogue in the animal world.

The greatest thing a human soul ever does in this world… to see clearly is poetry, prophecy and religion all in one.

A man will turn over half a library to make one book.

The difference between the almost right word and the right word is really a large matter – ‚tis the difference between the lightning-bug and the lightning.

Language is wine upon the lips.

One great use of words is to hide our thoughts.

Words are also actions, and actions are a kind of words.

But behavior in the human being is sometimes a defense, a way of concealing motives and thoughts, as language can be a way of hiding your thoughts and preventing communication.

I ain’t never called nobody no redskin. I’ve never been mad, like, ‚Get out of this restaurant, you redskin.‘

My publication record puts me in the top 0.5 percent of psychologists.

A friend of mine tells that I talk in shorthand and then smudge it.

Coffee is a language in itself.

Use what language you will, you can never say anything but what you are.

By and large, language is a tool for concealing the truth.

The finest language is mostly made up of simple unimposing words.

I feel impelled to speak today in a language that in a sense is new-one which I, who have spent so much of my life in the military profession, would have preferred never to use. That new language is the language of atomic warfare.

Scientists are not delinquents. Our work has changed the conditions in which men live, but the use made of these changes is the problem of governments, not of scientists.

Substitute ‚damn‘ every time you’re inclined to write ‚very‘; your editor will delete it and the writing will be just as it should be.

Dance music is no longer a simple Donna Summer beat. It’s become a whole language that I find fascinating and exciting. Eventually, it will lose the dance tag and join the fore of rock.

In energy, you have to plan and do research way in advance, sometimes decades in advance to get a new system that’s safer, doesn’t require us to go around the world to get all our oil.

If we go on your iPhone and go to the dictionary and look up ‚humble,‘ 80 per cent of the definition is negative. It’s a controlling word. It’s a way to control the masses and to control the sheep.

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

In much of society, research means to investigate something you do not know or understand.

The pace at which people are taking to digital technology defies our stereotypes of age, education, language and income.