Isaac Asimov Quotes

Language has no independent existence apart from the people who use it. It is not an end in itself; it is a means to an end of understanding who you are and what society is like.

Language was a huge expansion of that capacity to deal with information.

In fact, words are well adapted for description and the arousing of emotion, but for many kinds of precise thought other symbols are much better.

You couldn't have human society without language.

Words are our life. We are human because we use language. So I think we are less human when we use less language.

'LOL' is one of several texting expressions that convey nuance in a system where you don't have the voice and face to do it the way you normally would.

Because language is the carrier of ideas, it is easy to believe that it should be very little else than such a carrier.

Words are only painted fire; a look is the fire itself.

Language is not simply a reporting device for experience but a defining framework for it.

I speak three languages - English is my third language - so I take my time with lyrics. It's almost like having a conversation with somebody. If it's really important, you want to think about what you wanna say with that person, especially if it's for the last time.

As our larynxes descended, we were able to make sounds with our mouths in new and far more expressive ways. Verbal language soon overtook physical gesturing as the primary means of communication for all human beings except Italians. (Earth (The Book), p. 36)

Damn words; they're just the pots and pans of life, the pails and scrubbing-brushes. I wish I didn't have to think in words.

Language is, without a doubt, the most momentous and at the same time the most mysterious product of the human mind.

Words dazzle and deceive because they are mimed by the face. But black words on a white page are the soul laid bare.

Every spoken word double-crosses us. The written word is the only tolerable form of communication, as it isn't a stone in a bridge between souls but a ray of light between stars.

Words are tricky. Sometimes you need them to bring out the hurt festering inside. If you don't, it turns gangrenous and kills you. . . . But sometimes words can break a feeling into pieces.

Our biggest technology that we ever, ever invented was articulated language with built-out grammar. It is that that allows us to imagine things far in the future and things way back in the past.

That's the miracle of telling a story in film: You can express something inside someone's mind.

For millions of years, mankind lived just like the animals. Then something happened which unleashed the power of our imagination. We learned to talk and we learned to listen.

I am fascinated by language in daily life: the way it can evoke an emotion, a visual image, a complex idea, or a simple truth.

They ended every speech with the word hiro, which means: like I said. Thus each man took responsibility for intruding into the inarticulate murmur of the spheres. To hiro they added the word koue, a cry of joy or distress, according to whether it was sung or howled. Thus they essayed to piece the mysterious curtain which hangs between all talking men: at the end of every utterance a man stepped back, so to speak, and attempted to interpret his words to the listener, attempted to subvert the beguiling intellect with the noise of true emotion.

I cannot get him to write or speak in real, solid earnest. I don't much mind it now, but if it be always so, what shall I do with the serious part of myself?

Sometimes, language is the sound of longing

Speech is the mark of humanity. It is the normal terminus of thought.

He speaks in your voice, American, and there's a shine in his eye that's halfway hopeful.