John Maynard Smith Quotes

Language is a social art.

Language is possible due to a number of cognitive and physical characteristics that are unique to humans but none of which that are unique to language. Coming together they make language possible. But the fundamental building block of language is community.

Humans are a social species more than any other, and in order to build a community, which for some reason humans have to do in order to live, we have to solve the communication problem. Language is the tool that was invented to solve that problem.

Society not only continues to exist by transmission, by communication, but it may fairly be said to exist in transmission, in communication.

Language. By this we build pyramids, fight battles, ordain and administer laws, shape and teach religion, and knit man to man, cultivate each other, and ourselves.

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.

I face no problem in communicating with the people of Orissa whom I meet everyday.

Human society, the world, and the whole of mankind is to be found in the alphabet.

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

I parle Francais like a Spanish cow.

A language is a more ancient and inevitable thing than any state.

Sports are a microcosm of society.

My language is what I use, and if I lost that, I wouldn't be able to say anything.

Language is the friendliest of the things from which we cannot escape.

If you want to know what's important to a culture, learn their language.

I'm not a xenophobe - I think immigration is a good thing for most countries - but they transmute the foibles of their native tongues into English in a way that's difficult to figure out.

Speech is civilization itself.

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

And I'm walking along and we're laughing, kidding, joking, and see he understood the leader, the one we called the leader, had some knowledge of English, although limited.

I started out in anthropology, so to me how society works, how people put themselves together and make things work, has always been a big interest.

Language is the most extraordinary invention in the history of humanity, the one which came before everything and which makes it possible to share everything.

For the benefit of those who are not bilingual, I will now continue in English.

Language turned apes like us into civil creatures.

I love how humans talk.

Lots of people speak Afrikaans. It's not a statement; it's just a language that we use to communicate. It has its own flavour; it's got its own slang. People laugh. People like it. They like us being open.