Quotes about Linguistics

Explore a curated collection of 91 quotes about Linguistics at QuotesRead.com. Discover timeless wisdom, insightful thoughts, and memorable words on Linguistics from famous authors and thinkers around the world.

when a language dies, a way of understanding the world dies with it, a way of looking at the world. — George Steiner
Language disguises thought. — Ludwig Wittgenstein, Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus
It seemed to a number of philosophers of language, myself included, that we should attempt to achieve a unification of C — John Rogers Searle
Only by the aid of language does reason bring about its most important achievements, namely the harmonious and consisten — Arthur Schopenhauer, The World as Will and Representation, Vol 1
Time changes all things — there is no reason why language should escape this universal law
In the absence of a formally agreed, worldwide dictionary definition of 'Quotography' (in 2016), here are my two cents w — Alex Morritt, Lines & Lenses
All communication involves faith; indeed, some linguisticians hold that the potential obstacles to acts of verbal unders — Terry Eagleton, Reason, Faith, and Revolution: Reflections on the God Debate
If you're teaching, say, physics, there's no point in persuading a student that you're right. You want to encourage them — Noam Chomsky
Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to compute it. — Steven Pinker, Words and Rules: The Ingredients of Language
Every page should explode, either because of its staggering absurdity, the enthusiasm of its principles, or its typograp — Tristan Tzara, Manifesti del dadaismo
Words are catch-basins of experience, fingerprints and footprints of the past that the literary detective may scrutinize — Philip Zaleski, The Fellowship: The Literary Lives of the Inklings: J.R.R. Tolkien, C.S. Lewis, Owen Barfield, Charles Williams
We cannot control the way people interpret our ideas or thoughts, but we can control the words and tones we choose to co — Suzy Kassem, Rise Up and Salute the Sun: The Writings of Suzy Kassem
Language is my whore, my mistress, my wife, my pen-friend, my check-out girl. Language is a complimentary moist lemon-sc — Stephen Fry
To speak a language is to take on a world, a culture. — Frantz Fanon
It seems that in almost all societies, the attitudes that people have to language change is basically the same. People e — Terry Crowley, An Introduction to Historical Linguistics
We are told that in translation there is no such thing as equivalence. Many times the translator reaches a fork in the t — Kamand Kojouri
The rules of syntax and intonation and words matured over time into the system we have today because they were progressi — Christine Kenneally, The First Word: The Search for the Origins of Language
Devising a vocabulary for gardening is like devising a vocabulary for sex. There are the correct Latin names, but most p — Diane Ackerman, Cultivating Delight: A Natural History of My Garden
The job of the linguist, like that of the biologist or the botanist, is not to tell us how nature should behave, or what — Arika Okrent, In the Land of Invented Languages: Esperanto Rock Stars, Klingon Poets, Loglan Lovers, and the Mad Dreamers Who Tried to Build a Perfect Language
Das mine!' protested Ava, Bennie's daughter, affirming Alex's recent theory that language acquisition involved a phase o — Jennifer Egan, A Visit from the Goon Squad