Samuel Johnson Quotes

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.

The places I come from have such rich languages, such a variety of expression. In Sierra Leone we have about fifteen languages and three dialects. I grew up speaking about seven of them.

The Sami, as an indigenous people, as well as the Roma and other groups, have the right to maintain and develop their own language and culture.

The day a race ceases to express its thought and its sentiments in that language which has grown with it and which took form with its ethnic temperament, it is lost as a race. The preservation of its language is absolutely necessary to the preservation of the race, of its genius, its character and it's temperament.

It is asked of me that I give my first speech in this house in a language [English] other than my mother tongue [French.] …. Even if I knew English as intimately as I knew French, I would still give my first speech in the language of my French Canadian compatriots

To what better purpose can a man's energy be devoted, and his talents, than the resuscitation of his country's language?

Our language, one of our most precious natural resources, deserves at least as much protection as our woodlands, streams and whooping cranes.

You may translate books of science exactly. ... The beauties of poetry cannot be preserved in any language except that in which it was originally written.

Absolutely nothing is so important for a nation's culture as its language.

There are few efforts more conducive to humility than that of the translator trying to communicate an incommunicable beauty. Yet, unless we do try, something unique and never surpassed will cease to exist except in the libraries of a few inquisitive book lovers.

[Armenian] is a rich language, however, and would amply repay any one the trouble of learning it.

Nothing which is harmonized by the bond of the Muse can be changed from its own to another language without destroying its sweetness

To rescue from oblivion even a fragment of a language which men have used and which is in danger of being lost -that is to say, one of the elements, whether good or bad, which have shaped and complicated civilization -is to extend the scope of social observation and to serve civilization.

Language is capable of becoming the objective repository of vast accumulations of meaning and experience, which it can then preserve in time and transmit to following generations.

The idea of an Afrikaner people as a cultural entity and religious group with a special language will be retained in South Africa as long as civilisation stands.

I am adding another language to the spoken language, and I am trying to restore to the language of speech its old magic, its essential spellbinding power, for its mysterious possibilities have been forgotten.

No nation can survive without passing its heritage, language and, yes, faith to the next generation. A country must be built on something substantial and if the cultural elitists think it can be built on 'diversity,' that is a foundation of shifting sand.

Words are my passion / And out of them and me / I would create beauty.

All language is rhetorical, and even the senses are poets.

If our language and culture are not passed on to immigrants, where will they learn to value integrity in government and the rule of law?

Thus, literature, together with language, preserves and protects a nation's soul.

Of course my books are translated into many languages. I have here, in my home, translations on my shelf of my books into forty-five different languages. Almost none of them I can read. I can read only the English editions. But, I know that a translation of a work of literature is like playing a violin concerto on the piano. You can do this. You can do this very successfully on one strict condition: never try to force the piano to produce the sounds of the violin. This will be grotesque. So, different musical instruments provide for different music.

As a poet, there is only one political duty, and that is to defend one's language from corruption.

He cared for languages dead long enough that they wouldn’t change on him.

language can't be appropriated by one person, one poet. The words belong to all of us.