Language Sayings and Quotes

Below you will find our collection of inspirational, wise, and humorous old language quotes, language sayings, and language proverbs, collected over the years from a variety of sources.

Language is a living thing. Gilbert Highet
Language disguises thought. Ludwig Wittgenstein
Language is a weapon, keep it honed! Kurt Tucholsky
Language cannot say everything, fortunately. Mason Cooley
Use what language you will, you can never say anything but what you are. Ralph Waldo Emerson
A man who has a language consequently possesses the world expressed and implied by that language. Frantz Fanon
The past is always tense, the future perfect. Zadie Smith
What words say does not last. The words last. Because words are always the same, and what they say is never the same. Antonio Porchia
Thanks to words, we have been able to rise above the brutes; and thanks to words, we have often sunk to the level of the demons. Aldous Huxley
Language is power, life and the instrument of culture, the instrument of domination and liberation. Angela Carter
By swallowing evil words unsaid, no one has ever harmed his stomach. Winston Churchill
Language exerts hidden power, like the moon on the tides. Rita Mae Brown
Because of language, man has access to the past and the future. He can express the true and the untrue. Language helps him understand both what is and what could be. Wesley Douglass Camp
No one means all he says, and yet very few say all they mean, for words are slippery and thought is viscous. Henry Brooks Adams
It's a strange world of language in which skating on thin ice can get you into hot water. Franklin P. Jones
Language is the armory of the human mind, and at once contains the trophies of its past and the weapons of its future conquests. Samuel Taylor Coleridge
No one has a finer command of language than the person who keeps his mouth shut. Samuel Taliaferro Rayburn
The great enemy of clear language is insincerity. George Orwell
Language is legislation, speech is its code. We do not see the power which is in speech because we forget that all speech is a classification, and that all classifications are oppressive. Roland Barthes
Silence is the language of god, all else is poor translation. Rumi
Our language is the reflection of ourselves. A language is an exact reflection of the character and growth of its speakers. Cesar Chavez
Language has created the word loneliness to express the pain of being alone. And it has created the word 'solitude' to express the glory of being alone. Paul Tillich
The magic of the tongue is the most dangerous of all spells. Edward Bulwer Lytton
We live at the level of our language. Whatever we can articulate we can imagine or understand or explore. Ellen Gilchrist
A language, like a species, when extinct, never reappears. Charles Darwin
Language, which is the uniting bond and very medium of communion between men, is at the same time by the great variety of tongues, the means of severing and estranging nations more than anything else. Horace Smith
By stretching language we'll distort it sufficiently to wrap ourselves in it and hide. Jean Genet
Oppressive language does more than represent violence; it is violence; does more than represent the limits of knowledge; it limits knowledge. Toni Morrison
Language is a social art. Willard Van Orman Quine
Language is always evolving. Erik Qualman