Linguistic Proficiency Quotes

A man with a scant vocabulary will almost certainly be a weak thinker. The richer and more copious one's vocabulary and the greater one's awareness of fine distinctions and subtle nuances of meaning, the more fertile and precise is likely to be one's thinking. Knowledge of things and knowledge of the words for them grow together. If you do not know the words, you can hardly know the thing.

He who knows no foreign languages knows nothing of his own.

I'm certainly not a linguist. I learned what languages I could learn in order to read books and I can't really speak them. I couldn't have stayed out of jail in most of them.

I ended up majoring in English, which I'm not particularly fluent in.

Knowledge of languages is the doorway to wisdom.

I studied German at school. I lived in Berlin for two years and had a German girlfriend for five years, so I don't find speaking German particularly difficult. Singing was slightly more difficult.

It is good to be on your guard against an Englishman who speaks French perfectly; he is very likely to be a card-sharper or an attache in the diplomatic service.

He who does not know foreign languages does not know anything about his own.

I'd like to continue my education. The physical stuff's great and I think it's great as an actor because you get to live a lot of little lives, but learning more about the world, learning another language, continuing with my Spanish that's important.

Mastery of language affords remarkable power.

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

Loving your language means a command of its vocabulary beyond the level of the everyday.

President Obama said that if he could have any superpower, he'd want the ability to speak any language. That's so everyone in the world could tell him he picked one of the lamest possible superpowers.

The devil take these people and their language! They take a dozen monosyllabic words in their jaws, chew them, crunch them and spit them out again, and call that speaking. Fortunately they are by nature fairly silent, and although they gaze at us open-mouthed, they spare us long conversations.

You have a college degree? You can barely talk.

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

I don't speak but understand Gujarati.

If writing has taught me anything, it's that you don't actually understand anything until you can express it in words.

The aim is never to become a master of the Word, but to be mastered by it.

I probably have a 20,000-word vocabulary. I'll match my wits with anyone on literature, science and the arts.

Let me try once more," Milo said in an effort to explain. "In other words--" "You mean you have other words?" cried the bird happily. "Well, by all means, use them. You're certainly not doing very well with the ones you have now.

Women have a greater verbal capacity.

Vocabulary spills I'm ill.

A lot of them [Germaqn actors] could come in and we could speak for the next nine hours in English and there would be no problem. It was - but it was - English wasn't the language for them to read poetry in. And there is a - there's a poetic quality to my dialogue.

Learn your language well and command it well, and you will have the first component to life.