Sourced

• Not only the entire ability to think rests on language... but language is also the crux of the misunderstanding of reason with itself.
  • Johann Georg Hamann, Sämtliche Werken, ed. Josef Nadler (1949-1957), vol. III, p. 286

• There is no mode of action, no form of emotion, that we do not share with the lower animals. It is only by language that we rise above them, or above each other---by language, which is the parent, and not the ** ** Oscar Wilde, The Critic as Artist (1891), Part I.

• Verbing weirds language.
  • Bill Watterson, Homicidal Psycho Jungle Cat: A Calvin and Hobbes Collection (1994), p. 53.

• Speech is the best show a man puts on.
  • Benjamin Lee Whorf, Language, thought and reality (1956), pg. 249.

• ...a clever Toronto lawyer was deep into a technical argument before the Supreme Court. His position was dependent upon a close reading of the legal text and turned on the letter of the law. Suddenly the chief justice, Beverley McLachlin, leaned forward and asked the counsel if his argument also worked in French. After all, the law is the law in both languages and a loophole in one tends to evaporate in the other. Only an argument of substance stands up. The lawyer had no idea what to reply.
  • John Ralston Saul, A Fair Country, p. 128

• In language, the ignorant have prescribed laws to the learned.
  • Richard Duppa (1768-1831), writer and draughtsman. Maxims No. 252 (1830)

Unsourced

• "The language of friendship is not words but meanings." --Henry David Thoreau

• "Two languages in one head? No-one can live at that speed!";
  "But the Dutch speak four languages and smoke marijuana." --Eddie Izzard

• "Language is not only an instrument of communication or even of knowledge, but also an instrument of power. One seeks not only to be understood but also to be believed, obeyed, respected, distinguished." --Pierre Bourdieu

• "He who is ignorant of other languages is ignorant of his own." --Goethe

• "In the commerce of speech use only coin of gold and silver." --Joseph Joubert

• "The language denotes the man. A coarse or refined character finds its expression naturally in a coarse or refined phraseology." --Bovee

• "Language is the picture and counterpart of thought." --Mark Hopkins

• "Felicity, not fluency, of language is a merit." --Whipple