Archive

Quotes

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

—George Orwell, 1944

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

Language is the house of being. In its home human beings dwell. Those who think and those who create with words are the guardians of this home.

—Martin Heidegger, 1949

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.

—Tertullian, c. 217

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

Every man is surrounded by a neighborhood of voluntary spies.

—Jane Austen, 1818

Only connect! That was the whole of her sermon. Only connect the prose and the passion, and both will be exalted, and human love will be seen at its height.

—E.M. Forster, 1910

Do not the most moving moments of our lives find us all without words?

—Marcel Marceau, 1958

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

—Galen, c. 175

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

I sometimes think of what future historians will say of us. A single sentence will suffice for modern man: he fornicated and read the papers.

—Albert Camus, 1957

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

—Ludwig Wittgenstein, 1915