Man is the one name belonging to every nation upon earth: there is one soul and many tongues, one spirit and various sounds; every country has its own speech, but the subjects of speech are common to all.

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

The gift of a common tongue is a priceless inheritance and it may well some day become the foundation of a common citizenship.

Whereof one cannot speak, thereof one must be silent.

I rather think the cinema will die. Look at the energy being exerted to revive it—yesterday it was color, today three dimensions. I don’t give it forty years more. Witness the decline of conversation. Only the Irish have remained incomparable conversationalists, maybe because technical progress has passed them by.

Information can tell us everything. It has all the answers. But they are answers to questions we have not asked, and which doubtless don’t even arise.

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

My language is the common prostitute that I turn into a virgin.

It is a luxury to be understood.

How absurd men are! They never use the liberties they have, they demand those they do not have. They have freedom of thought, they demand freedom of speech.

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.

Language ought to be the joint creation of poets and manual workers.

The 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.