Language Quotes

There’s no such thing as dead languages, only dormant minds.

Language buries, but does not resurrect.

Language is the source of misunderstandings.[translation by Richard Howard]Words are the source of misunderstandings.[translation by Katherine Woods][Le langage est source de malentendus.]

Language is courage: the ability to conceive a thought, to speak it, and by doing so to make it true.

In which language does rain fall over tormented cities?

Differences of habit and language are nothing at all if our aims are identical and our hearts are open.

Bad language is a stage all children go through, and it dies with time when they learn they’re not attracting attention with it.

You learned the concept ‘pain’ when you learned language.[Den Begriff ‘Schmerz’ hast du mit der Sprache gelernt.]

When everything else fails, we communicate in the language of the stars.

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

To imagine a language means to imagine a form of life.[Und eine Sprache vorstellen heißt, sich eine Lebensform vorstellen.]

The problems of language here are really serious. We wish to speak in some way about the structure of the atoms and not only about the ‘facts’ — the latter being, for instance, the black spots on a photographic plate or the water droplets in a cloud chamber. But we cannot speak about the atoms in ordinary language.