language quotes

Aldous Huxley: 

Every individual is at once the beneficiary and the victim of the linguistic tradition into which he has been born - the beneficiary inasmuch as language gives access to the accumulated records of other people's experience, the victim in so far as it confirms him in the belief that reduced awareness is the only awareness and as it bedevils his sense of reality, so that he is all too apt to take his concepts for data, his words for actual things.

Bertrand Russell: 

By studying the principles of symbolism we can learn not to be unconsciously influenced by language, and in this way can escape a host of erroneous notions.

E. B. White: 

English usage is sometimes more than mere taste, judgment and education -- sometimes it's sheer luck, like getting across the street.

George Bernard Shaw: 

England and America are two countries divided by a common language.

George Bernard Shaw: 

England and America are two countries divided by a common language.

Gustave Flaubert: 

Language is a cracked kettle on which we beat out tunes for bears to dance to, while all the time we long to move the stars to pity.

J. Michael Straczynski: 

The quality of our thoughts is bordered on all sides by our facility with language.

Jack Lynch: 

Arguments over grammar and style are often as fierce as those over IBM versus Mac, and as fruitless as Coke versus Pepsi and boxers versus briefs.

Jane Wagner: 

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

Kenneth Patton: 

We learn what we have said from those who listen to our speaking.

Ralph Waldo Emerson: 

Thought is the blossom; language the bud; action the fruit behind it.