All slang is metaphor, and all metaphor is poetry.
Gilbert K. ChestertonOne great use of words is to hide our thoughts.
VoltaireLanguage 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 ChomskyIf 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 WestPressed into service means pressed out of shape.
Robert Frost‚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 GatesFinality is not the language of politics.
Benjamin DisraeliWar is what happens when language fails.
Margaret AtwoodMany 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. TolkienTo use the same words is not a sufficient guarantee of understanding; one must use the same words for the same genus of inward experience; ultimately one must have one’s experiences in common.
Friedrich NietzscheMind 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 PratchettNo one means all he says, and yet very few say all they mean, for words are slippery and thought is viscous.
Henry AdamsShort words are best and the old words when short are best of all.
Winston ChurchillMost of the fundamental ideas of science are essentially simple, and may, as a rule, be expressed in a language comprehensible to everyone.
Albert EinsteinHumor is the first of the gifts to perish in a foreign tongue.
Virginia WoolfRhetoric 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.
AristotleAs 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 EastwoodThe finest language is mostly made up of simple unimposing words.
George EliotThe higher a man stands, the more the word vulgar becomes unintelligible to him.
John RuskinI 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 AngelouIf a word in the dictionary were misspelled, how would we know?
Steven WrightWhen written in Chinese, the word ‚crisis‘ is composed of two characters. One represents danger and the other represents opportunity.
John F. KennedyLanguage is one component of the human cognitive capacity which happens to be fairly amenable to enquiry. So we know a good deal about that.
Noam ChomskySubstitute ‚damn‘ every time you’re inclined to write ‚very‘; your editor will delete it and the writing will be just as it should be.
Mark TwainI promised myself that I would write as well as I can, tell the truth, not to tell everything I know, but to make sure that everything I tell is true, as I understand it. And to use the eloquence which my language affords me.
Maya AngelouWe are symbols, and inhabit symbols.
Ralph Waldo EmersonWords are but symbols for the relations of things to one another and to us; nowhere do they touch upon absolute truth.
Friedrich NietzscheY’all are so cute and y’all talk so proper over here. I love England.
Beyonce KnowlesIn 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.
AristotlePhilosophy is written in this grand book, the universe, which stands continually open to our gaze. But the book cannot be understood unless one first learns to comprehend the language and read the letters in which it is composed.
Galileo GalileiThe 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.
AristotleWords, words, mere words, no matter from the heart.
William ShakespeareObscenity comes from grime.
Christopher HitchensI have my own vocabulary. I love linguistics. That surprises people.
Matthew McConaugheyOf 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.
Maya AngelouLanguage is the dress of thought.
Samuel JohnsonBut 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 MaslowI grew up cursing a lot.
Adam SandlerYou can stroke people with words.
F. Scott FitzgeraldMoney has a language of its own.
Robert KiyosakiI think we’re still in a muddle with our language, because once you get words and a spoken language it gets harder to communicate.
Jane GoodallThe 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.
Maya AngelouIf 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 MandelaI am not going to be a mouthpiece for language that I detest.
Jordan PetersonWoe to the makers of literal translations, who by rendering every word weaken the meaning! It is indeed by so doing that we can say the letter kills and the spirit gives life.
VoltaireWhen a politician uses the word ‚folks,‘ we should brace ourselves for the deceit, or worse, that is coming.
Noam ChomskyI speak a number of languages, but none are more beautiful to me than English.
Maya AngelouI’ve always appreciated a turn of phrase.
John KennedyMusic 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.
BonoYou could imagine a language exactly like English except it doesn’t have connectives like ‚and‘ that allow you to make longer expressions. An infant learning truncated English would have no idea about this: They would just pick it up as they would standard English.
Noam ChomskyIf you can talk, you can write.
Christopher HitchensBlack men don’t like to be called ‚boys,‘ but women accept being called ‚girls.‘
Marilyn MonroeWhat’s another word for Thesaurus?
Steven WrightSuit the action to the word, the word to the action.
William ShakespeareBut if thought corrupts language, language can also corrupt thought.
George OrwellEvery legend, moreover, contains its residuum of truth, and the root function of language is to control the universe by describing it.
James BaldwinPoetry is what gets lost in translation.
Robert FrostI 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. Feynman‚Do you spell it with a ‚V‘ or a ‚W‘?‘ inquired the judge. ‚That depends upon the taste and fancy of the speller, my Lord‘.
Charles Dickens