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Quotes

Words pay no debts.

—William Shakespeare, 1601

Slang is as old as speech and the congregating together of people in cities. It is the result of crowding and excitement and artificial life.

—John Camden Hotten, 1859

We should have a great many fewer disputes in the world if words were taken for what they are, the signs of our ideas only, and not for things themselves.

—John Locke, 1690

Language is the house of being. In its home human beings dwell. Those who think and those who create with words are the guardians of this home.

—Martin Heidegger, 1949

Language is the archives of history.

—Ralph Waldo Emerson, 1844

It is a luxury to be understood.

—Ralph Waldo Emerson, 1831

A good newspaper, I suppose, is a nation talking to itself.

—Arthur Miller, 1961

I have often repented speaking, but never of holding my tongue.

—Xenocrates, c. 350 BC

What a glut of books! Who can read them? As already, we shall have a vast chaos and confusion of books; we are oppressed with them, our eyes ache with reading, our fingers with turning.

—Robert Burton, 1621

Unexemplary words and unfounded doctrines are avoided by the noble person. Why utter them?

—Dong Zhongshu, c. 120 BC

God never sent a messenger save with the language of his folk, that he might make the message clear for them.

—The Qur’an, c. 620

Newspapers always excite curiosity. No one ever lays one down without a feeling of disappointment.

—Charles Lamb, 1833

In the case of news, we should always wait for the sacrament of confirmation.

—Voltaire, 1764