The chief merit of language is clearness, and we know that nothing detracts so much from this as do unfamiliar terms.
—Galen, c. 175Quotes
The gift of a common tongue is a priceless inheritance and it may well some day become the foundation of a common citizenship.
—Winston Churchill, 1943Speak and speed; the close mouth catches no flies.
—Benjamin Franklin, c. 1732It is impossible to translate the poets. Can you translate music?
—Voltaire, c. 1732My language is the common prostitute that I turn into a virgin.
—Karl Kraus, c. 1910Unexemplary words and unfounded doctrines are avoided by the noble person. Why utter them?
—Dong Zhongshu, c. 120 BCLanguage is the archives of history.
—Ralph Waldo Emerson, 1844Every man has a right to utter what he thinks truth, and every other man has a right to knock him down for it. Martyrdom is the test.
—Samuel Johnson, 1780I am always sorry when any language is lost, because languages are the pedigrees of nations.
—Samuel Johnson, 1773A good newspaper, I suppose, is a nation talking to itself.
—Arthur Miller, 1961Under all speech that is good for anything, there lies a silence that is better. Silence is deep as eternity; speech is shallow as time.
—Thomas Carlyle, 1838God never sent a messenger save with the language of his folk, that he might make the message clear for them.
—The Qur’an, c. 620The only authors whom I acknowledge as American are the journalists. They indeed are not great writers, but they speak the language of their countrymen, and make themselves heard by them.
—Alexis de Tocqueville, 1840