Christopher Hitchens Quotes

He had picked up languages the way most sailors pick up diseases; languages were his gonorrhoea, his syphilis, his scurvy, his ague, his plague.

I've been working in three-four languages. I'm happy to do it.

They say he's an intelligent man, right? Speaks five languages! I've got a 15-year-old boy from the Ivory Coast who speaks five languages!

I want to find a genie in a bottle that can grant me three wishes. I want to be able to speak, read, write, and understand any language ever written or spoken, just any language throughout the history of man. That would be one of my wishes from the genie, so I would have to put "multilingual" on the resume, should I ever find the genie.

They called me the sexiest economist in America, and that was years ago, when I had hair and body mass and my teeth were shiny.

I was very adept at acquiring languages.

I speak a little Spanish but I am so impressed by people who can speak a lot of different languages.

I have a good ear for languages.

I had to know at least two languages.

I realized over the years if I'm writing about humor, irony, satire, I much prefer to do that in English. And if there is sorrow, melancholy, longing, I much prefer to do that in Turkish. Each language has its own strength to me, and I feel connected and attached to both Turkish and English. I dream in more than one language.

I can speak English, Portuguese, and a bit of Spanish, or Sportugal. It's a mix of Portuguese and Spanish. I understand French and Italian, but I can't speak them.

I have a weird obsession with people who can speak multiple languages. I'd love to be able to do that.

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

Knowledge of languages is the doorway to wisdom.

I feel pretty stupid that I don't know any foreign languages. I wish I knew French or Arabic or Chinese.

I think it'd be pretty cool to fly. Actually, I'd like to be Language Gal. My super power is that I can speak every language.

To use two languages familiarly and without contaminating one by the other, is very difficult; and to use more than two is hardly to be hoped. The prizes which some have received for their multiplicity of languages may be sufficient to excite industry, but can hardly generate confidence.

I think we all get our own bag of hammers. We all get our own Parkinson's. We all have our own thing. I think that we'll look at it through the filter of that experience, and we'll say, "Yeah, I need to laugh at my stuff, too."

I have a funny relationship to language. When I came to California when I was three I spoke Urdu fluently and I didn't speak a word of English. Within a few months I lost all my Urdu and spoke only English and then I learned Urdu all over again when I was nine. Urdu is my first language but it's not as good as my English and it's sort of become my third language. English is my best language but was the second language I learned.

No instance exists of a person's writing two language perfectly. That will always appear to be his native language which was most familiar to him in his youth.

My philological studies have satisfied me that a gifted person ought to learn English (barring spelling and pronouncing) in thirty hours, French in thirty days, and German in thirty years. It seems manifest, then, that the latter tongue ought to be trimmed down and repaired. If it is to remain as it is, it ought to be gently and reverently set aside among the dead languages, for only the dead have time to learn it.

My mother, she's the one who's gifted with language. She can speak Japanese, of course, Tagalog, which is a Filipino dialect, Spanish as well as English. And I speak a little bit Japanese because I've had the opportunity to work alongside Japanese people. And a little bit of German, a little bit of Portuguese because of work. A little bit of French because of work. But then, if you asked me to carry-on an everyday conversation, I would fail miserably.

I told my doctor I wonna stop aging, he gave me a gun!

[Languages] became a tool that served me my whole life.

I'll do one eventually as life's too short and none of us is getting any younger. I'd like to make one while I still look good and before I look like Phil Collins, which, eventually, I will.