Assertion Quote by Elizabeth Hardwick

As societies grow decadent, the language grows decadent, too. Words are used to disguise, not to illuminate, action: you liberate a city by destroying…

— Gore Vidal

“The English language is like London: proudly barbaric yet deeply civilised, too, common yet royal, vulgar yet processional, sacred yet profane. Each sentence we…

— Stephen Fry

We must now turn from considering the necessary struggle with language arising, as it were, from its very nature and the nature of the…

— Chinua Achebe

The violence of language consists in its effort to capture the ineffable and, hence, to destroy it, to seize hold of that which must…

— Judith Butler

“What the survival of threatened languages means, perhaps, is the endurance of dozens, hundreds, thousands of subtly different notions of truth.”

— Mark Abley

As societies grow decadent, the language grows decadent, too. Words are used to disguise, not to illuminate, action...

— Gore Vidal

The violent illiteracies of the graffiti, the clenched silence of the adolescent, the nonsense cries from the stage-happening, are resolutely strategic. The insurgent and…

— George Steiner

Language conveys a certain power. It is one of the instruments of domination. It is carefully guarded by the superior people because it is…

— Sheila Rowbotham

“Yes, but bad language is bound to make in addition bad government, whereas good language is not bound to make bad government. That again…

— Ezra Pound

The language itself, whether you speak it or not, whether you love it or hate it, is like some bewitchment or seduction from the…

— Jan Morris

With society and its public, there is no longer any other language than that of bombs, barricades, and all that follows.

— Antonin Artaud

“The point in all this is that language is a handy whipping boy to summon and belabor when we have failed in some serious…

— Chinua Achebe