language - quotes

(Marcus Tullius) Cicero, 106 BC-43 BC

was a Roman author, orator, and politician

Neither can embellishments of language be found without arrangement and expression of thoughts, nor can thoughts be made to shine without the light of language.

Antoine de Saint-Exupéry, 1900-1944

was a French writer

Language is the source of misunderstandings.

Henry David Thoreau, 1817-1862

was an US Transcendentalist author

We are armed with language adequate to describe each leaf of the filed, but not to describe human character.

George Orwell (Eric Arthur Blair), 1903-1950

was an English essayist, novelist, and satirist

The great enemy of clear language is insincerity. When there is a gap between one's real and one's declared aims, one turns as it were instinctively to long words and exhausted idioms, like a cuttlefish spurting out ink.

( “Politics and the English Language”, 1946 )