Language Limits Quotes

No language which lends itself to visualizability can describe quantum jumps.

Everyone, he went on, speaks a language he does not understand, but which now and then is understood by others. That is enough to permit one to exist and at least to be misunderstood.

I think the names of colors are at the edge, between where language fails and where it's at its most powerful.

Of course, you can say it backwards, which is dociousaliexpilisticfragicalirupus, but that's going a bit too far, don't you think?

Language can only deal meaningfully with a special, restricted segment of reality. The rest, and it is presumably the much larger part, is silence.

We never say so much as when we do not quite know what we want to say. We need few words when we have something to say, but all the words in all the dictionaries will not suffice when we have nothing to say and want desperately to say it.

What we cannot think we cannot think, therefore we also cannot say what we cannot think.

Philosophical problems arise when language goes on holiday

Man feels the urge to run up against the limits of language. Think for example of the astonishment that anything at all exists. This astonishment cannot be expressed in the form of a question, and there is also no answer whatsoever. Anything we might say is a priori bound to be nonsense. Nevertheless we do run up against the limits of language. Kierkegaard too saw that there is this running up against something, and he referred to it in a fairly similar way (as running up against paradox). This running up against the limits of language is ethics.

A theology should be like poetry, which takes us to the end of what words and thoughts can do.

We can move no faster than the evolution of our language, and this is certainly part of what the psychedelics are about: they force the evolution of language.

Unlike the ambiguity of life, the ambiguity of language does reach a limit.

Can you do Division? Divide a loaf by a knife - what's the answer to that?

Real thinking is possible only in the light of genuine language, no matter how limited, how primitive.

I think records and music are more appropriate and more respectful of the human soul than the churches are. And more respectful of the needs of humans to communicate with the aspects of themselves that are neglected by language.

Thoughts without words… Can that be?

I don't like swearing on the air. As a matter of fact, I'm not a prude, but... I watch HBO and some of the comedy stuff, and I'm constantly asking myself, 'Why have we gone there?' It seems like it's unfortunate. It's so cheap. It's so easy.

When it comes to atoms, language can be used only as in poetry.

Language, at least, may give up the secrets of life and death, leading us through the maze to the original Word as monster or angel, to the mournful place where we may meet Job and hear his cry, 'How long will you vex my soul and break me in pieces with words?

Profound music leads us beyond language...to the dark roots of our scream and the celestial heights of our silence.

We never know what we are talking about.

Elizabeth, Lady C, claims to be writing at the limits of language. Would it not be insulting to her if I were diligently to follow after her, explaining what she means but is not smart enough to say?

The limits of my language mark the limits of my world.

Rembrandt is so deeply mysterious that he says things for which there are no words in any language.

I listen to music a great deal. In a way, it's trying to express things that can't be expressed in words. That's something that interests me, too. Even though I use words to express myself, I am trying to, it seems to me, get beyond that.