Quotes about Language

We must be free or die, who speak the tongue that Shakespeare spoke: the faith and morals hold which Milton held.

My brother Francis wrote a letter in Greek to the headmasters of private schools, selling cooking stoves. When some wrote back that they could not read Greek, he sent them another letter — in Latin. This produced orders.

The right word may be effective, but no word was ever as effective as a rightly timed pause.

I still believe in man in spite of man. I believe in language even though it has been wounded, deformed, and perverted by the enemies of mankind. And I continue to cling to words because it is up to us to transform them into instruments of comprehension rather than contempt. It is up to us to choose whether we wish to use them to curse or to heal, to wound or to console.

The only wealth I'm interested in is a wealth of words.

There are so many who know more than I do, who understand the world better than I do. I would be truly learned, a great scholar, if only I could retain everything I've learned from those I have known. But then would I still be me? And isn't all that only words? Words grow old, too; they change their meaning and their usage. They get sick just as we do; they die of their wounds and then they are relegated to the dust of dictionaries. And where am I in all this?

A missionary plods through the first year or two, thinking that things will be different when he speaks the language. He is baffled to find, frequently, that they are not.

Man's word is God in man.

Political correctness is evil.

It annoys me when I phone a hotel receptionist in my own country, and they don't understand what I am saying because they don't speak English. I think that's wrong. It's nothing to do with being politically correct or incorrect; it's just not right.

Being politically correct means saying what's polite rather than what's accurate. I like to be accurate.

The language of love and the language of seduction are the same. The one who wishes a girl for a wife and the one who wishes her for only a night both say the words, "I love you." Jesus has told us to discern between the language of seduction and the language of love, and to know the wolves clad in sheepskin from the real sheep.