Human nature Quote by Alfred North Whitehead

Human language is nothing like the signalling systems of other animals.

— Noam Chomsky

Selfish-gene theory tells us nothing about the value of interacting through language.

— Noam Chomsky

All speech, written or spoken, is a dead language, until it finds a willing and prepared hearer.

— Robert Louis Stevenson

Speech has both an individual and a social side, and we cannot conceive of one without the other.

— Ferdinand de Saussure

There is a world of communication which is not dependent on words.

— Mary Martin

No speech can stain what is noble by nature.

— Sophocles

You couldn't have human society without language.

— John Maynard Smith

Speech happens to not be his language.

— Madame de Stael

There should be no means of communication which we cannot read.

— David Cameron

Language is mankind’s greatest invention – except, of course, that it was never invented.

— Guy Deutscher

Language is an impure medium. Speech is public property and words are the soiled products, not of nature, but of society, which circulates and…

— Edward Hirsch

Human language is local and changeable, and is therefore incapable of being used as the means of unchangeable and universal information.

— Thomas Paine