Steven Pinker Quotes

Words, words, words! They shut one off from the universe. Three quarters of the time one's never in contact with things, only with the beastly words that stand for them.

Unless one understands the power of words, he will never understand men.

Language cares.

I see people in terms of dialogue and I believe that people are their talk.

There's something magical about the idea that you can write something down and someone else can read it. I'm still mildly agog about that.

Communication is at the very core of our society. That's what makes us human.

How or by what magic is it, that we convey our thoughts to one another with such case and accuracy?

All speech, written or spoken, is a dead language, until it finds a willing and prepared hearer.

Any friendship or relationship is about a language.

We are shaped by our conversations.

Words make a world of difference. Over time, they become charged with inference and allusion and, deployed effectively, they have the power to change the very fabric of our civilisation.

'Arrival' talks very little about language and how to precisely dissect a foreign language. It's more a film on intuition and communication by intuition, the language of intuition.

Words are only as good as the response to those words.

Words are not trivial. They matter because they raise consciousness.

You speak to be understood, right? And you're understood so you can be felt. And you're felt so you can get what you want.

Humans are fascinated with communication. I was always drawn to words and stories, staying in touch with your feelings and being open to what's around you.

The purpose of language is to communicate. That's the most basic definition of language. I have my own subjective experience going on in my head, and you have your own subjective experience going on in your head. The only way we can bridge that unbridgeable gap is through language.

I face no problem in communicating with the people of Orissa whom I meet everyday.

You have to put up with the risk of being misunderstood if you are going to try to communicate.

If I do not speak in a language that can be understood there is little chance for a dialogue.

One of the hardest things in the world is to convey a meaning accurately from one mind to another.

Speech is but broken light upon the depth Of the unspoken.

Translation is the circulatory system of the world's literatures

We know more from nature than we can at will communicate.

We use words to understand each other and even, sometimes, to find each other.