“Writing obscures language; it is not a guise for language but a disguise.”
Ferdinand de Saussure book Course in General Linguistics
Source: Cours de linguistique générale (1916), p. 31
Source: Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus
“Writing obscures language; it is not a guise for language but a disguise.”
Ferdinand de Saussure book Course in General Linguistics
Source: Cours de linguistique générale (1916), p. 31
“But if thought corrupts language, language can also corrupt thought.”
George Orwell book 1984
"Politics and the English Language" (1946)
Source: 1984
Context: But if thought corrupts language, language can also corrupt thought. A bad usage can spread by tradition and imitation even among people who should and do know better.
Context: All issues are political issues, and politics itself is a mass of lies, evasions, folly, hatred, and schizophrenia. When the general atmosphere is bad, language must suffer. I should expect to find — this is a guess which I have not sufficient knowledge to verify — that the German, Russian and Italian languages have all deteriorated in the last ten or fifteen years, as a result of dictatorship.
But if thought corrupts language, language can also corrupt thought. A bad usage can spread by tradition and imitation even among people who should and do know better.
Caterina Davinio (1957) Italian writer
Source: Virtual Mercury House. Planetary & Interplanetary Events, p. 48
“Language is the dress of thought.”
Samuel Johnson (1709–1784) English writer
The Life of Cowley
Lives of the English Poets (1779–81)
“Different languages, the same thoughts; servant to thoughts and their masters.”
Dejan Stojanovic (1959) poet, writer, and businessman
“Hidden Words,” p. 58
The Sun Watches the Sun (1999), Sequence: “A Stone and a Word”
“Language is the picture and counterpart of thought.”
Mark Hopkins (educator) (1802–1887) American educationalist and theologian
Address, Dedication of Williston Seminary, Dec. 1, 1841.
“How could you disguise your own thoughts so even you didn't know what you were thinking?”
Orson Scott Card (1951) American science fiction novelist
Homecoming saga, The Memory Of Earth (1992)
“Loose language suggests loose thought.”
Theodore Dalrymple (1949) English doctor and writer
Victim impact statements represent the sentimentalisation - the Diana-ification - of the criminal justice system, argues Theodore Dalrymple http://www.socialaffairsunit.org.uk/blog/archives/001298.php (December 11, 2006). <br class="br">The Social Affairs Unit (2006 - 2008)
“Language is the mother of thought, not its handmaiden.”
Karl Kraus (1874–1936) Czech playwright and publicist
Half-Truths and One-And-A-Half Truths (1976)