Laurence Sterne Quotes

You're sort of programmed a certain way because of your environment. That's all you know. But we don't have that anymore because of the internet. Because of the internet we're all communicating with each other all across the board, so you're getting information from people all around the world, hitting a much more diverse slice of culture.

I consider myself a pretty good conversationalist, but you wind up being downgraded to idiot status when you don't speak the language!

When I was 20, I went to Paris and tried to meet French women. It didn't work.

I have family in Italy that my mother keeps in contact with, but I don't because I don't speak Italian.

And I'm walking along and we're laughing, kidding, joking, and see he understood the leader, the one we called the leader, had some knowledge of English, although limited.

People appreciate when you make an effort to speak their language.

I only saw one English-speaking person all the way across Siberia.

Even when well translated. can we really understand what other cultures are talking about?

If you spend 72 hours in a place you've never been, talking to people whose language you don't speak about social, political, and economic complexities you don't understand, and you come back as the world's biggest know-it-all, you're a reporter. Either that or you're President Obama.

I couldn't get along with the French.

I get to travel the world doing what I love to do - making other people happy... They might not even understand my words, but the one thing everybody understands is music.

One of my biggest sponsors is based in China, and I probably spend as much time there as I do in the U.K. Over the years, I have really grown to love it, but the first time I went was a different story.

It doesn't matter to me where am I going. Language is not a barrier for me, I can go anywhere with my craft, so why not Hollywood?

Without a knowledge of languages you feel as if you don't have a passport.

The uses of travel are occasional, and short; but the best fruit it finds, when it finds it, is conversation; and this is a main function of life.

The sum of human wisdom is not contained in any one language.

I am a Mexican that has been lucky enough to travel the world, speaking English, but with a heart that speaks a universal language.

There is probably no country so barbarous that would not disclose all it knew, if it received equivalent information; and I am apt to think that a person who was ready to give more knowledge than he received would be welcome wherever he came.

One of them, for example, which will probably haunt me more than any other is the problem of communication.

I'm a believer in the benefits of translation. It's a necessity and a privilege - it would be awful to be limited to reading authors who's work was composed in the languages I happen to have learned.

Because English is the universal language. No matter where you come from, if you sing in English, you can cross over to the world.

It's about something that I'm extremely passionate about: exploring other cultures, how Americans are perceived by other cultures and how we perceive other cultures through our worldview. I travel whenever I get an opportunity to do so, and I think this country is ready for a show on television that is bilingual and really puts front and center another culture, both as the protagonist and the antagonist.

The most basic barrier was language itself, very few Americans in Iraq whether soldiers or diplomats or news paper reporters could speak more than a few words of Arabic. A remarkable number of them didn't even have translators. That meant for many Iraqis the typical 19 year old army corporal from South Dakota was not a youthful innocent carrying Americas good will, he was a terrifying combination of firepower and ignorance.

Musicians can travel all over the world and have an audience, because there's no language barrier.

If I spoke no English, my world would be limited to the Japanese-speaking community, and no matter how talented I was, I could never do business, seek employment or take part in public affairs outside that community.