Language Quote by Alfred North Whitehead

“Like the positivists, Wittgenstein was hostile to metaphysics. But he attacked metaphysics not with a blunt instrument like the verification principle, but by the…

— Anthony Kenny

Now between the meanings of words and their sounds there is ordinarily no discoverable relation except one of accident; and it is therefore miraculous,…

— John Crowe Ransom

“Human language, for us moderns, has swung in on itself, turning its back on the beings around us. Language is a human property, suitable…

— David Abram

“Grammar and ordinary language are bad guides to metaphysics. A great book might be written showing the influence of syntax on philosophy.”

— Bertrand Russell

To conceal a want of real ideas, many make for themselves an imposing apparatus of long compound words, intricate flourishes and phrases, new and…

— Arthur Schopenhauer

We are trapped by language to such a degree that every attempt to formulate insight is a play on words.

— Niels Bohr

Space and force pervade language. Many cognitive scientists (including me) have concluded from their research on language that a handful of concepts about places,…

— Steven Pinker

Profound thought is conveyed in language of very great simplicity and purity.

— Charlotte Mason

“To satisfy themselves with this, they gladly grasp at words, especially those which denote indefinite, very abstract, and unusual concepts difficult to explain, such,…

— Arthur Schopenhauer

“From time immemorial, some men supposed to deal in one-valued 'eternal verities'. We called such men 'philosophers' or 'meta-physicians'. But they seldom realized that…

— Alfred Korzybski

The influence exercised over the human mind by apt analogies is and has always been immense. Whether they translate an established truth into simple…

— Winston Churchill

“Let us have a language worthy of our world, a democratic style where rich and well-born nouns can roister with some sluttish verb yet…

— William Gass