Archive

Quotes

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

Language is the archives of history.

—Ralph Waldo Emerson, 1844

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

—Karl Kraus, c. 1910

It is a luxury to be understood.

—Ralph Waldo Emerson, 1831

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

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

—Arthur Miller, 1961

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

—Samuel Johnson, 1773

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

—Dong Zhongshu, c. 120 BC

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.

—Jean Baudrillard, c. 1987

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, 1780

Methinks the human method of expression by sound of tongue is very elementary and ought to be substituted for some ingenious invention which should be able to give vent to at least six coherent sentences at once.

—Virginia Woolf, 1899

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.

—Søren Kierkegaard, 1843

Making a film means, first of all, to tell a story. That story can be an improbable one, but it should never be banal. It must be dramatic and human. What is drama, after all, but life with the dull bits cut out?

—Alfred Hitchcock, 1962