Willard Van Orman Quine Quotes

Plainly, children learn their language. I don't speak Swahili. And it cannot be that my language is 'an innate property of our brain.' Otherwise I would have been genetically programmed to speak (some variety of) English.

I've always said that I learned the English I know through two sources -- Marvel Comics and Finnegans Wake.

It's still a mystery to me exactly how I learned the language. [But] I was 19 years old and I had very urgent things to tell girls.

I listen to people talking sometimes, that great river that is language, with all its undercurrents of grammar and nuance, and I wonder how we all learn so quickly to speak it, given that we begin when we are barely old enough to stand upright. I have no memory of finding it hard. Indeed, I have no memory of it at all.

Why can't the English teach their children how to speak?

That's why it's important to be multilingual, because it teaches you so much about your own language.

First I think I was interested in the stories, and later on, I became more interested in the language itself, so the stories became almost secondary, but it was kind of a background music for my life.

Ricky had taught me a few cuss words. I usually practiced them in the woods by the river, then prayed for forgiveness as soon as I was done.

It is by metaphor that language grows.

We were language's magpies by nature, stealing whatever sounded bright and shiny.

I'd like to learn French well enough to write in that language.

The conquest of learning is achieved through the knowledge of languages.

I think it's harder to learn a language without having a goal.

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

Learn the Arabic language; it will sharpen your wisdom.

He who speaks a bit of a foreign language has more delight in it than he who speaks it well; pleasure goes along with superficial knowledge.

Children learn to speak Male or Female the way they learn to speak English or French.

How many languages can a child learn? As many as you will take the time to teach them.

Language helps develp life as surely as it reflects life. It is a most important part of our human condition.

See that your children are properly educated in the rudiments of their mother tongue, and then let them proceed to higher branches of learning.

I loved languages, and loved learning languages. It was fantastic. But I was alone there. I remember that time as a real Virginia Woolf time. More than any language it was her language that influenced me.

I co-founded Duolingo with the mission of bringing free language education to the world.

Language is something that springs from the biological matrix, and the neurological matrix, within us.

Whoever lives in whichever state should learn the culture of thestate and its language.

A refugee population is hungry for language and aware that anything can happen.