Richard Leakey Quotes

The difference between humans and other mammals is that we know how to accessorize.

'Why' is a question no animal can ask, because both the question and answers require speech. Have you ever seen an animal shrug?

Words are what created our world. Words are what keep it going.

Speech is the mirror of the mind.

As fascinated as I was by words on paper, it was matched by my fascination with words in people's mouths. The spoken word. And that is the world of theatre.

If writers wrote as carelessly as some people talk, then adhasdh asdglaseuyt[bn[ pasdlgkhasdfasdf.

Spoken language is merely a series of squeaks.

Speech is our second possession, after the soul-and perhaps we have no other possession in this world.

What a pity it is that there are so many words! Whenever one wants to say anything, three or four ways of saying it run into one's head together and one can't tell which to choose. It is as troublesome and puzzling as choosing a ribbon ... or a husband.

The point here is what makes human beings different from other creatures is our ability to use language. We can use words to express ourselves in very eloquent and complex ways. We grow up telling and listening to stories. That's what turns us into the people we are.

There is no mode of action, no form of emotion, that we do not share with the lower animals. It is only by language that we rise above them.

For me, speaking is work. It's not like when you breathe.

Language would have evolved first as an internal object, a kind of "language of thought" (LOT), with externalisation (hence communication) an ancillary process. I can't review here the strong and growing evidence to support this conclusion, but I have elsewhere. There are ample reasons why having a LOT would confer selectional advantage: the person so endowed could plan, interpret, reflect, etc., in ways denied to others.

Language is a form of organized stutter.

The tongue of man is a twisty thing.

There's one thing that shows up on all of the lists of what makes us human: language. Our ability to share our thoughts and complex information with others far surpasses all the barks, squeaks and growls of our animal friends.

Literature is as old as speech. It grew out of a human need for it, and it has not changed except to become more needed

You can never tell about a person by guessing...that's why language was invented. Otherwise, we'd all be like dogs, sniffing each other to find out where we stood.

Speaking uses us up, speeds us up. Without prayer, that act of confession for merely existing, one might live forever and not know it.

Everyone knows how to talk, and no one knows what to say.

The thought process can never be complete without articulation.

Language is the most beautiful and destructive thing because it allows you to express yourself, but it totally confuses everything.

The living tongue that tells the word, the living ear that hears it, bind and bond us in the communion we long for in the silence of our inner solitude.

We need to change what we say and what we allow to be said in front of us.

Sometimes speech is no more than a device for saying nothing - and a neater one than silence.