Archive

Quotes

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

—Charles Lamb, 1833

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

—George Orwell, 1944

Language is a part of our organism and no less complicated than it.

—Ludwig Wittgenstein, 1915

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, 1943

Writing cannot express words fully; words cannot express thoughts fully.

—The Book of Changes, c. 350 BC

The newspaper is the natural enemy of the book, as the whore is of the decent woman.

—Edmond and Jules de Goncourt, 1858

The more the pleasures of the body fade away, the greater to me is the pleasure and charm of conversation.

—Plato, c. 375 BC

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. 

—Alexis de Tocqueville, 1840

The chief merit of language is clearness, and we know that nothing detracts so much from this as do unfamiliar terms.

—Galen, c. 175

History does not merely touch on language, but takes place in it.

—Theodor Adorno, c. 1946

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

—Xenocrates, c. 350 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

Whereof one cannot speak, thereof one must be silent.

—Ludwig Wittgenstein, 1921