#language

I am so far as I am aware not at all influenced by dramatists, expect for Shakespeare, who I have to say, it is impossible not to be influenced by if you hold language to be the major element of theatre. ↗

— Howard Barker

#aware #dramatists #element #expect #far

If a book were written all in numbers, it would be true. It would be just. Nothing said in words ever came out quite even. Things in words got twisted and ran together, instead of staying straight and fitting together. But underneath the words, at the center, like the center of the Square, it all came out even. Everything could change, yet nothing would be lost. If you saw the numbers you could see that, the balance, the pattern. You saw the foundations of the world. And they were solid. ↗

— Ursula K. Le Guin

#maths #physics #science #change

Ludwig Wittgenstein once said that names are the only things that exist in the world. Maybe that's true, but the problem is that as time passes by, names do not remain the same - even if they don't change. ↗

— Victor Pelevin

#change

Nothing in language is immutably fixed: the best writers are constantly changing it. ↗

— C. E. Montague

#rewrites #change

Meanwhile, the poor Babel fish, by effectively removing all barriers to communication between different races and cultures, has caused more and bloodier wars than anything else in the history of creation. ↗

— Douglas Adams

#power-of-words #communication

For in spite of language, in spite of intelligence and intuition and sympathy, one can never really communicate anything to anybody. ↗

— Aldous Huxley

#inadequacy-of-words #language #communication

Those who know nothing of foreign languages know nothing of their own. ↗

— Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

#knowledge #languages #travel #understanding #communication

When I say or write something, there are actually a whole lot of different things I am communicating. The propositional content (i.e., the verbal information I'm trying to convey) is only one part of it. Another part is stuff about me, the communicator. Everyone knows this. It's a function of the fact there are so many different well-formed ways to say the same basic thing, from e.g. "I was attacked by a bear!" to "Goddamn bear tried to kill me!" to "That ursine juggernaut did essay to sup upon my person!" and so on. ↗

— David Foster Wallace

#communication #language #communication

Words have power. ↗

— Mira Grant

#language #persuasion #power #words #communication

Neither you nor I speak English, but there are some things that can be said only in English. ↗

— Aravind Adiga

#communication #english #language #communication