Linguistic Quotes

82 quotes by 71 authors

If we ask a vague question, such as, 'What is poetry?' we expect a vague answer, such as, 'Poetry is the music of words,' or… — A. R. Ammons
One writes such a story [The Lord of the Rings] not out of the leaves of trees still to be observed, nor by means of… — J.R.R. Tolkien
The proverbial German phenomenon of the verb-at-the-end about which droll tales of absentminded professors who would begin a sentence, ramble on for an entire lecture,… — Douglas Hofstadter
The linguistic clumsiness of tourists and students might be the price we pay for the linguistic genius we displayed as babies, just as the decrepitude… — Steven Pinker
Every individual is at once the beneficiary and the victim of the linguistic tradition into which he has been born... — Aldous Huxley
History has blessed us with all the freedom and advantages of multiculturalism. But it has also blessed us, because of the accident of our origins,… — Charles Krauthammer
Where mathematics and spirit join, where proof of the existence of mystery-salvific mystery-shimmers just below the surfaces of human perception, experience and the linguistic veil… — Jorie Graham
Why does everyone cling to the masculine imagery and pronouns even though they are a mere linguistic device that has never meant that God is… — Carol P. Christ
What we call ideology is precisely the confusion of linguistic with natural reality, of reference with phenomenalism — Paul de Man
We live in a world populated by structures - a complex mixture of geological, biological, social, and linguistic constructions that are nothing but accumulations of… — Manuel De Landa
Fiction, I believed, was the transmutation of experiential dross into linguistic gold. Fiction meant taking up whatever the world had abandoned by the road and… — Jonathan Franzen
There are no philosophical problems, there is only a suite of interconnected linguistic cul de sacs created by language's inability to reflect the truth. — Victor Pelevin
A linguistic system is a series of differences of sound combined with a series of differences of ideas. — Ferdinand de Saussure
Let us be cautious in making assertions and critical in examining them, but tolerant in permitting linguistic forms. — Rudolf Carnap
Storytelling draws on the magic of language to created Elsewheres. Writers use a linguistic sleight-of-hand to take an attribute, attach them to new objects, and… — Maria Tatar
Definitions, contrary to popular opinion, tell us nothing about things. They only describe people's linguistic habits; that is, they tell us what noises people make… — S I Hayakawa
I have resisted the term sociolinguistics for many years, since it implies that there can be a successful linguistic theory or practice which is not… — William Labov
Tradition is the transmitting of linguistic messages that constitute the horizon within which Dasein is thrown as a historically determined project: and tradition derives its… — Gianni Vattimo
English is an outrageous tangle of those derivations and other multifarious linguistic influences, from Yiddish to Shoshone, which has grown up around a gnarly core… — Roy Blount, Jr.
With a profound first-hand knowledge of participants, encompassing linguistic competence, and engaging prose, Padraic Kenney recreates the simultaneously serious and playful currents of East Europe's… — Charles S. Maier

Who Wrote These Linguistic Quotes

71 authors contributed a total of 82 Linguistic Quotes, led by these top contributors: