51 quotes
“...that witchcraft requires no potions, familiar spirits, or magic wands. Language upon a silver tongue affords enchantment enough.”
"The misuse of language induces evil in the soul"
— Socrates
"Language is the armoury of the human mind and at once contains the trophies of its past and the weapons of its future conquests."
— Samuel Taylor Coleridge
"Whereof one cannot speak, thereof one must be silent."
— Ludwig Wittgenstein
"Names and attributes must be accommodated to the essence of things, and not the essence to the names, since things come first and names afterwards."
— Galileo
"Language is a virus from outer space."
— William S. Burroughs
"Language is the mother, not the handmaiden, of thought; words will tell you things you never thought or felt before."
— W.H. Auden
"A mind enclosed in language is in prison."
— Simone Weil
"To use language is to enter into the territory of categories, which are as necessary as they are dangerous."
— Rebecca Solnit
"We think because we have words, not the other way around. The more words we have, the better able we are to think conceptually."
— Madeleine L'Engle
"The limits of my language mean the limits of my world."
"The limits of my language means the limits of my world."
"The limits of your language are the limits of your world."
"If we spoke a different language, we would perceive a somewhat different world."
"An entire mythology is stored within our language."
"The limits of my language are the limits of my mind. All I know is what I have words for."
"Language disguises thought."
"When I use a word,' Humpty Dumpty said in a rather scornful tone, 'it means just what I choose it to mean - neither more nor less."
— Lewis Carroll
"Language is the light of the mind."
— John Stuart Mill
"Abuse of words has been the great instrument of sophistry and chicanery, of party, faction, and division of society."
— John Adams
"No, she wasn't losing language. She was choking on it."
— Gregory Maguire