I am always sorry when any language is lost, because languages are the pedigrees of nations.
—Samuel Johnson, 1773Quotes
Every 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, 1780Information 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.
—Jean Baudrillard, c. 1987Slang is a language that rolls up its sleeves, spits on its hands, and goes to work.
—Carl Sandburg, 1959Language ought to be the joint creation of poets and manual workers.
—George Orwell, 1944The gift of a common tongue is a priceless inheritance and it may well some day become the foundation of a common citizenship.
—Winston Churchill, 1943A good newspaper, I suppose, is a nation talking to itself.
—Arthur Miller, 1961Speak and speed; the close mouth catches no flies.
—Benjamin Franklin, c. 1732Do not the most moving moments of our lives find us all without words?
—Marcel Marceau, 1958Under 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, 1838Writing cannot express words fully; words cannot express thoughts fully.
—The Book of Changes, c. 350 BCI live by good soup, and not on fine language.
—Molière, 1672What 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