We must distinguish between speaking to deceive and being silent to be reserved.
VoltairePoetry is what gets lost in translation.
Robert FrostThe great enemy of clear language is insincerity. When there is a gap between one’s real and one’s declared aims, one turns, as it were, instinctively to long words and exhausted idioms, like a cuttlefish squirting out ink.
George OrwellMusic fills in for words a lot of the time when people don’t know what to say, and I think music can be more eloquent than words.
BonoLanguage is an intrinsic part of who we are and what has, for good or evil, happened to us.
Alice WalkerI am most familiar with the Gujarati language.
Narendra ModiLanguage is the dress of thought.
Samuel JohnsonRhetoric may be defined as the faculty of observing in any given case the available means of persuasion. This is not a function of any other art.
AristotleI grew up cursing a lot. It felt natural. My parents told me to stop.
Adam SandlerFinality is not the language of politics.
Benjamin DisraeliBeing politically correct means saying what’s polite rather than what’s accurate. I like to be accurate.
Robert KiyosakiThe 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.
Mark Twain‚No comment‘ is a splendid expression. I am using it again and again.
Winston ChurchillI have learned to interface – what I think would be the contemporary term – with various different lexicons, and people speak very different languages. I’ve learned to speak in a lot of tongues, and I can live with the bellicose language of some fervent, fire-breathing Christians, sure.
BonoBut 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.
Abraham MaslowSuit the action to the word, the word to the action.
William ShakespeareMany parents and teachers have become irritated to the point of distraction at the way the weed-style growth of ‚like‘ has spread through the idiom of the young. And it’s true that in some cases the term has become simultaneously a crutch and a tic, driving out the rest of the vocabulary as candy expels vegetables.
Christopher HitchensA friend of mine tells that I talk in shorthand and then smudge it.
J. R. R. TolkienI 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.
Dwight D. EisenhowerJust 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.
Christopher HitchensSure, women sportswriters look when they’re in the clubhouse. Read their stories. How else do you explain a capital letter in the middle of a word?
Bob UeckerIf you want to influence people, you want them to accept your suggestions, you don’t say, ‚You don’t know how to use the English language,‘ or ‚How could you make that argument?‘ It will be welcomed much more if you have a gentle touch than if you are aggressive.
Ruth Bader GinsburgOne great use of words is to hide our thoughts.
VoltaireAs 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.
Clint EastwoodIf 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.
Kanye WestIf the tongue had not been framed for articulation, man would still be a beast in the forest.
Ralph Waldo EmersonIn making a speech one must study three points: first, the means of producing persuasion; second, the language; third the proper arrangement of the various parts of the speech.
AristotleEvery now and then I will see a word as if for the first time, and suddenly appreciate that Evian is ‚naive‘ spelled backward, or that Bosnia is an anagram of ‚bonsai.‘
Christopher HitchensI 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.
Richard P. FeynmanWhen written in Chinese, the word ‚crisis‘ is composed of two characters. One represents danger and the other represents opportunity.
John F. KennedyBlack men don’t like to be called ‚boys,‘ but women accept being called ‚girls.‘
Marilyn MonroeDance 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.
David BowieMoney has a language of its own.
Robert KiyosakiI grew up cursing a lot.
Adam SandlerBroadly speaking, the short words are the best, and the old words best of all.
Winston ChurchillI very rarely think in words at all. A thought comes, and I may try to express it in words afterwards.
Albert Einstein‚Recreative‘ is a word that I invented because in urban culture, with colloquialism, we invent so many slangs. I don’t like the way that ‚recreational‘ sounds – I don’t like to say I do a lot of ‚recreational‘ reading. I like to say that I read ‚recreatively.‘ I do a lot of ‚recreative‘ reading.
Kevin GatesAs Bromberger observed, rules are understood to be elements of the computational systems that determine the sound and meaning of the infinite array of expressions of a language; the information so derived is accessed by other systems in language use.
Noam ChomskyIn a certain way, it’s the sound of the words, the inflection and the way the song is sung and the way it fits the melody and the way the syllables are on the tongue that has as much of the meaning as the actual, literal words.
David ByrneI do not, in fact, use many puns. Certainly there are far fewer than people believe. But I suspect the ones I do occasionally use tend to hang around in people’s memories for a while.
Terry PratchettNo man means all he says, and yet very few say all they mean, for words are slippery and thought is viscous.
Henry AdamsWords are but the signs of ideas.
Samuel JohnsonI could talk all day, T stands for talking, T stands for tender, T stands for things that don’t even rhyme with T.
Mr. TI try to speak in a way that people can understand.
John KennedyIf you talk to a man in a language he understands, that goes to his head. If you talk to him in his language, that goes to his heart.
Nelson MandelaWe are tired of aristocratic explanations in Harvard words.
Dwight D. EisenhowerI 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.
Maya AngelouIn the grip of a neurological disorder, I am fast losing control of words even as my relationship with the world has been reduced to them.
Christopher HitchensI remember the first time I heard a teenager say ‚LOL.‘ Just what? But it means ‚laugh.‘ Why don’t you just laugh? What are you doing?
J. K. RowlingThe higher a man stands, the more the word vulgar becomes unintelligible to him.
John RuskinLanguage is a process of free creation; its laws and principles are fixed, but the manner in which the principles of generation are used is free and infinitely varied. Even the interpretation and use of words involves a process of free creation.
Noam ChomskyUse what language you will, you can never say anything but what you are.
Ralph Waldo EmersonAs soon as you have a language that has a past tense and a future tense you’re going to say, ‚Where did we come from, what happens next?‘ The ability to remember the past helps us plan the future.
Margaret AtwoodBe not a slave of words.
Thomas CarlyleMind you, the Elizabethans had so many words for the female genitals that it is quite hard to speak a sentence of modern English without inadvertently mentioning at least three of them.
Terry PratchettI have my own vocabulary. I love linguistics. That surprises people.
Matthew McConaugheyThere is always another way to say the same thing that doesn’t look at all like the way you said it before. I don’t know what the reason for this is. I think it is somehow a representation of the simplicity of nature.
Richard P. FeynmanI used to be a great fan of doing crosswords. When you’re fiddling around with anagrams, you get wonderful jumbles of syllables that become interesting.
Douglas AdamsIf a child from an Amazonian hunter-gatherer tribe comes to Boston, is raised in Boston, that child will be indistinguishable in language capacities from my children growing up here, and vice versa.
Noam ChomskyThe poet, being an imitator like a painter or any other artist, must of necessity imitate one of three objects – things as they were or are, things as they are said or thought to be, or things as they ought to be. The vehicle of expression is language – either current terms or, it may be, rare words or metaphors.
Aristotle