A linguistic system is a series of differences of sound combined with a series of differences of ideas.


A mind enclosed in language is in prison.


A special kind of beauty exists which is born in language, of language, and for language.


After all, when you come right down to it, how many people speak the same language even when they speak the same language?


All official institutions of language are repeating machines: school, sports, advertising, popular songs, news, all continually repeat the same structure, the same meaning, often the same words: the stereotype is a political fact, the major figure of ideology.


All true language is incomprehensible, like the chatter of a beggar's teeth.


An art whose medium is language will always show a high degree of critical creativeness, for speech is itself a critique of life: it names, it characterizes, it passes judgment, in that it creates.


And who in time knows whither we may vent the treasure of our tongue, to what strange shores this gain of our best glories shall be sent, 't unknowing Nations with our stores? What worlds in the yet unformed Occident may come refined with the accents that are ours?


Any language is necessarily a finite system applied with different degrees of creativity to an infinite variety of situations, and most of the words and phrases we use are ''prefabricated'' in the sense that we don't coin new ones every time we speak.


As advertising blather becomes the nation's normal idiom, language becomes printed noise.


As societies grow decadent, the language grows decadent, too. Words are used to disguise, not to illuminate, action: you liberate a city by destroying it. Words are to confuse, so that at election time people will solemnly vote against their own interests


As the language of the face is universal, so 'tis very comprehensive; no laconism can reach it: 'Tis the short hand of the mind, and crowds a great deal in a little room


Because language is the carrier of ideas, it is easy to believe that it should be very little else than such a carrier.


Curiously enough, it seems to be only in describing a mode of language which does not mean what it says that one can actually say what one means.


Drawing on my fine command of the language, I said nothing.


Even if you do learn to speak correct English, whom are you going to speak it to?


Everything can change, but not the language that we carry inside us, like a world more exclusive and final than one's mother's womb.


Grammar and logic free language from being at the mercy of the tone of voice. Grammar protects us against misunderstanding the sound of an uttered name; logic protects us against what we say have double meaning.


How many languages are there in the world? How about 5 billion! Each of us talks, listens, and thinks in his/her own special language that has been shaped by our culture, experiences, profession, personality, mores and attitudes. The chances of us meeting someone else who talks the exact same language is pretty remote.


I am always sorry when any language is lost, because languages are the pedigrees of nations.

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