Noam Chomsky Quotes

A language is a more ancient and inevitable thing than any state.

Language also encodes our past. We want to know who we are. To know who we are, we have to know who we used to be. Consequently, our literature, written in the past, anchors us in that past.

Countries and places have a history, a story, and a culture.

Without memory, there is no culture. Without memory, there would be no civilization, no society, no future.

The greatest guarantee for the preservation of a person’s identity is language and faith, and all Armenians must carry these two values.

We have a unique culture.

He said that if culture is a house, then language was the key to the front door; to all the rooms inside. Without it, he said, you ended up wayward, without a proper home or a legitimate identity.

If you want to know what's important to a culture, learn their language.

I do not speak Hebrew, but I understand that it has no word for 'history.' The closest word for it is memory.

A nation without a language is a nation without a heart.

A nation is a work of art and a work of time.

Art is the permanence of a civilization.

A deep meaning resides in old customs.

Language and identity are so fundamentally intertwined. You peel back all the layers in terms of what we wear and what we eat and all the things that mark us, and in the end, what we have are our words.

I think music is a great way of helping people to get to know a country's culture.

Music is part of our culture.

History is the key to citizenship.

I know that everything essential and great originated from the fact that the human being had a homeland and was rooted in tradition.

Just as a tree without roots is dead, a people without history or cultural roots also becomes a dead people.

It takes a lifetime to build tradition.

A people's speech is the skin of its culture.

I think history is inextricably linked to identity. If you don't know your history, if you don't know your family, who are you?

It is important for all of us to appreciate where we come from and how that history has really shaped us in ways that we might not understand.

I think the history and the past we have is just an energy we've built up to do what we do now.

We've got to know our history. We have to be able to bring our children to a place that they can be proud of.