David Mitchell Quotes

If you know only one language, you're a prisoner, stuck in the tyranny of that one language.

Wer fremde Sprachen nicht kennt, weiss nichts von seiner eigenen.He who is ignorant of foreign languages, knows not his own.

It's like saying French shouldn't be taught because you don't understand it because it's new. Shakespeare is just like learning a new, exciting language.

Foreign languages are another favourite topic, and as these men are bilingual they have a fair notion of what it means to speak and think in many different idioms.

For the benefit of those who are not bilingual, I will now continue in English.

Man is multiplied by the number of languages he possesses and speaks.

Globalization has brought a proliferation of such environments, so that even monolinguals must increasingly learn to live and act multilingually.

I must confess... I don't know any tongue but the Nether-Dutch.

Do you know what a foreign accent is? It's a sign of bravery.

A man who is ignorant of foreign languages is also ignorant of his own language.

To possess another language, Charlemagne tells us, is to possess another soul. German is such a language. Once you have it in your head, you can go there anytime, you can close the door, you have a refuge.

Nobody should call themselves a professional if they only knew one language.

I'm bugged because I can't believe I can't speak every language there is. But I feel I can when I sit and am with somebody, and I can dance for them. Because dance is dialogue without language.

Knowledge of languages is the doorway to wisdom.

If you don't know foreign languages, you don't know anything about your own.

To possess another language is to possess another soul.

You have to have a little humility if you're Danish because you're never going to be able to travel outside the country unless you can speak another language.

[My mother tongue is] Albanian. But, I am equally fluent in Bengali (language of Calcutta) and English.

Neither in French nor in English nor in Mexican.

To speak a language is to take on a world, a culture.

When a person has an accent, it means he can speak one more language than you

A language which we do not know is a fortress sealed.

I may speak many languages, but there remains one in which I live.

I think it's good for anybody to learn languages. Americans are particularly limited in that way. Europeans less so... We're beginning to have Spanish move in on English in the states because of all the people coming from Hispanic countries... and we're beginning to learn some Spanish. And I think that's a good thing... Only having one language is very limiting... You get to think that's the way the human race is made; there's only one language worth speaking... Well, this isn't good for English.

Ay, is it not a language I speak?