Language Imperialism Quotes

Only if a Chinaman presents proof of affiliation with the West, has Western patrons vouch for him, and writes in 'pure' English, may he present his 'submission' to Western publishers. ~ Thorsten J. Pattberg

Finally, I would like to point out that now in the age of English, choosing a language policy is not the exclusive concern of non-English-speaking nations. It is also a concern for English-speaking nations, where, to realize the world's diversity and gain the humility that is proper to any human being, people need to learn a foreign language as a matter of course. Acquiring a foreign language should be a universal requirement of compulsory education. Furthermore, English expressions used in international conferences should be regulated and standardized to some extent. Native English speakers need to know that to foreigners, Latinate vocabulary is easier to understand than what to the native speakers is easy, child-friendly language. At international conferences, telling jokes that none but native speakers can comprehend is inappropriate, even if fun. If native speakers of English – those who enjoy the privilege of having their mother tongue as the universal language – would not wait for others to protest but would take steps to regulate themselves, what respect they would earn from the rest of the world! If that is too much to ask, the rest of the world would appreciate it if they would at least be aware of their privileged position – and more important, be aware that the privilege is unwarranted. In this age of global communication, some language or other was bound to be come a universal language used in every corner of the world English became that language not because it i ~ Minae Mizumura

Science Magazine wouldn't in a dream think about publishing a single Chinese term. Chinese words and brands must be suppressed, crushed even, hold back at all costs. ~ Thorsten J. Pattberg

Most Western journalists in China prefer a Chinese-free international language, and thus bend over backwards to replace important Chinese terms with Western vocabularies. ~ Thorsten J. Pattberg

Evolution is the root of atheism, of communism, nazism, behaviorism, racism, economic imperialism, militarism, libertinism, anarchism, and all manner of anti-Christian systems of belief and practice. ~ Henry M. Morris

Ever since the Greeks, we have been drunk with language! We have made a cage with words and shoved our God inside! ~ Morris West

the voices are so persuasive, you don't know what's real and what's not. You know the voices aren't talking into your ears, but they're not exactly in your head either. They seem to call to you from another place that you've accidentally tapped into, like a cell phone pulling in a conversation in some foreign language - yet somehow you understand it. They linger there on the edge of your consciousness like the things you hear just as you're waking up, before the dream collapses under the crushing weight of the real world. But what if the dream doesn't go away when you wake up? And what if you lose the ability to tell the difference? ~ Neal Shusterman

The Actor, noticing a closed bookshop, dismounted from the horse which he tied to a street lamp. He woke up the bookseller and bought a Spanish grammar and dictionary. He set out again across town marveling at the way that the words of the foreign language were freshly gathered fruits and not old and dry. They touched the senses marvelously, new like young beggars who accost you, not yet words but the every things they designate, happily running naked before being clothed again in abstraction. ~ Georges Limbour

There was a time when we were told ... that a sense of common interest would preside over the conduct of the respective members ... This language at the present day would appear as wild as that great part of what we now hear from the same quarter will be thought, when we shall have received further lessons from that best oracle of wisdom, experience. ~ Alexander Hamilton

Language betrays,
in order to mean. ~ Terence McKenna

Because Music is a language that lives in the spiritual realms, we can hear it, we can notate it and create it, but we cannot hold it in our hands ~ Joy Harjo

There are as many approaches as there are families, but linguists have defined three main ones with infinite variations: The one-parent-one-language approach, the minority language at home approach, and the mixed language approach. ~ Annika Bourgogne

Historically and culturally, New York City and our entire nation simply would not be the same without the infusion of Asian traditions. Whether it is food, art, language or any other facet of cultural life, Asian Americans have made our city and our country stronger and richer. ~ Nydia Velazquez

It is a tragedy beyond the power of language to convey when what has been imposed on women by force becomes a standard of freedom for women: and all the women say it is so. ~ Andrea Dworkin

Doctrinal formulae are neither a set of neat definitions nor some sort of affront to the free-thinking soul; they are words that tell us enough truth to bring us to the edge of speech, and words that sustain enough common life to hold us there together in worship and mutual love... I learned to rethink Hegel and to grasp that what he was concerned with was not a system that could be projected on to some detached reality 'out there', but a habit of thinking that always sought to understand itself as a process of self-questioning and self-dissolution in the process of discovering *real* language - and thus real thinking. It is the energy of surpassing the settled individual self in the journey to truth... The Hegelian point (as I understand it) is that meaning does not come in the gaps between words or things, but in the way in which the structure and the surface of the world and speech can be so read and heard as to lead us into new and strange configurations of understanding - how words and things always deliver more than themselves, more than a series of objects and labels, and so both undermine and re-establish appearances.

Hans Urs von Balthasar... developed an aesthetic of extraordinary depth in which some of the same themes may be discerned. His 'dramatic' construal of the world is meant to remind us that we do not start from intuitions of spiritual truth and then embody them in some way in practices and words. First we are addressed and engaged by what is utt ~ Rowan Williams

[He] understood the people in a new way ... The people is not everyone who speaks our language, nor yet the elect marked by the fiery stamp of genius. Not by birth, not by the work of one's hands, not by the wings of education is one elected into the people.
But by one's inner self.
Everyone forges his inner self year after year.
One must try to temper, to cut, to polish one's soul so as to become a human being.
And thereby become a tiny particle of one's own people. ~ Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn

Accounting numbers, of course, are the language of business and as such are of enormous help to anyone evaluating the worth of a business and tracking its progress. Charlie and I would be lost without these numbers: they invariably are the starting point for us in evaluating our own businesses and those of others. Managers and owners need to remember, however, that accounting is but an aid to business thinking, never a substitute for it. ~ Warren Buffett

Freedom doesn't give you the license to do whatever the hell you want. It doesn't give you the license to, excuse my language, piss on other people's freedom. ~ Jessica Zafra

A language that takes our emotions seriously and gives them real weight in our lives encourages us to think and be and act differently. ~ Dorothee Solle

I actually used to make these little plays. I would stand there, and I would act out where I was dying or something. I would make them sit there and watch all my plays. I would be talking in gibberish language, like I was talking in a different language, and my parents would be like, 'Oh that was great!' and I'd be like, 'Wait, it's not done!' ~ Madison Davenport

Just as composers go to concerts and artists visit galleries, writers read. You will learn, in the most enjoyable way, more about style and language from reading good literature than you will ever acquire from workshops and how-to books. ~ Judith Barrington

I'm not against profanity. It's an important part of the language when used properly. ~ Robert Klein

The world of physics is essentially the real world construed by mathematical abstractions, and the world of sense is the real world construed by the abstractions which the sense-organs immediately furnish. To suppose that the "material mode" is a primitive and groping attempt at physical conception is a fatal error in epistemology. ~ Susanne K. Langer

I realized with grief that purposeless activities in language arts are probably the burial grounds of language development and that coffins can be found in most classrooms, including mine. ~ Mem Fox

Consciousness is nothing but a neuro-chemical and a mechanical action of the body. Consciousness is important, but the expression of thoughts with language makes us human. Everything is conscious, but levels of consciousness are different. ~ Debasish Mridha

See, that's what I want more of. A little spunk!'

'Fuck off!' I yell, shocking myself with my vulgar language.

'Ooh, yes, carry on, you filthy-mouthed bitch!'

I gasp and swing around, finding him grinning from ear to ear. 'Wanker.'

'Cow.'

'Tosser.'

He grins some more. 'Dog.'

'Shirt-lifter,' I retort.

'Tart.'

I recoil, horrified. 'I am not a tart! ~ Jodi Ellen Malpas

Barack Obama's mother, Stanley Ann Dunham, had quite an interesting life, shot through with coincidences. Stanley Ann was some mom
and by 'some mom,' it's meant that she was a globetrotting, oil-rep-marrying, CIA-front-employed, twelve-language-speaking, International Mom of Mystery. ~ Mondo Frazier

We are absurdly accustomed to the miracle of a few written signs being able to contain immortal imagery, involutions of thought, new worlds with live people, speaking, weeping, laughing. We take it for granted so simply that in a sense, by the very act of brutish routine acceptance, we undo the work of the ages, the history of the gradual elaboration of poetical description and construction, from the treeman to Browning, from the caveman to Keats. What if we awake one day, all of us, and find ourselves utterly unable to read? I wish you to gasp not only at what you read but at the miracle of its being readable. ~ Vladimir Nabokov

The coldest word was once a glowing new metaphor. ~ Thomas Carlyle

I didn't have any more time. Directly below the window was a thickly leafed bush of some sort. I couldn't see it clearly and only hoped it wasn't a rosebush or something equally sharp. A second floor drop wouldn't kill me, though. Probably wouldn't even hurt - much.
I climbed over the ledge, briefly meeting Dimitri's gaze as the other Strigoi moved in on him. The words came to me again: Don't hesitate. Dimitri's important lesson. But it hadn't been his first one. His first had been about what to do if I was outnumbered and out of options: Run.
Time for me to run.
I leapt out the window.
I think the profanities that came out of my mouth when I hit the ground would have been understandable in any language. It hurt. ~ Richelle Mead

When the heart speaks, its language is the same under all latitudes. ~ Ella Maillart

Jung said that to be in a situation where there is no way out or to be in a conflict where there is no solution is the classical beginning of the process of individuation. It is meant to be a situation without solution; the unconscious wants the hopeless conflict in order to put ego consciousness up against the wall, so that the man has to realize that whatever he does is wrong, whichever way he decides will be wrong. This is meant to knock out the superiority of the ego, which always acts from the illusion that it has the responsibility of decision ... If he is ethical enough to suffer to the core of his personality, then generally, because of the insolubility of the conscious situation, the Self manifests. In religious language you could say that the situation without issue is meant to force the man to rely on an act of God. ~ Marie-Louise Von Franz

Mythic Background

Describing his approach to science, Einstein said something that sounds distinctly prescientific, and hearkens back to those ancient Greeks he admired:

What really interests me is whether God had any choice in the creation of the world.

Einstein's suggestion that God-or a world-making Artisan-might not have choices would have scandalized Newton or Maxwell. It fits very well, however, with the Pythagorean search for universal harmony, or with Plato's concept of a changeless Ideal.

If the Artisan had no choice: Why not? What might constrain a world-making Artisan?

One possibility arises if the Artisan is at heart an artist. Then the constraint is desire for beauty. I'd like to (and do) infer that Einstein thought along the line of our Question-Does the world embody beautiful ideas?-and put his faith in the answer "yes!"

Beauty is a vague concept. But so, to begin with, were concepts like "force" and "energy." Through dialogue with Nature, scientists learned to refine the meaning of "force" and "energy," to bring their use into line with important aspects of reality.

So too, by studying the Artisan's handiwork, we evolve refined concepts of "symmetry," and ultimately of "beauty"-concepts that reflect important aspects of reality, while remaining true to the spirit of their use in common language. ~ Frank Wilczek

Because it is a systematic negation of the other person and a furious determination to deny the other person all attributes of humanity, colonialism forces the people it dominates to ask themselves the question constantly: "In reality, who am I?" The defensive attitudes created by this violent bringing together of the colonised man and the colonial system form themselves into a structures which then reveals the colonised personality. This 'sensitivity' is easily understood if we simply study and are alive to the number and depth of the injuries inflicted upon a native during a single day spent amidst the colonial regime. It must in any case be remembered that a colonised people is not only simply a dominated people. Under the German occupation the French remained men; under the French occupation, the Germans remained men. In Algeria there is not simply the domination but the decision to the letter not to occupy anything more than the sum total of the land. ~ Frantz Fanon

[Georg Cantor was the first to prove that there could be a series of infinities; that infinities come in an infinite number of sizes.] Thus Cantor's Absolute is a perfect image for what we experience of God. When I speak of a Big Enough God I am not merely thinking of an Infinite God, but the God of infinities, the Absolute, which either chooses to reveal itself or remains veiled in mystery. Modern mathematics does begin to feel like the language that God talks. ~ Sara Maitland

So while you're getting ripped apart head to toe as you fall into a black hole, you will also extrude through the fabric of space and time, like toothpaste squeezed through a tube. To all the words in the English language that describe ways to die (e.g., homicide, suicide, electrocution, suffocation, starvation) we add the term spaghettification. ~ Neil DeGrasse Tyson

If the third dimension and perceptions of sacredness are an important part of human nature, then the scientific community should accept religiosity as a normal and healthy aspect of human nature - an aspect that is as deep, important, and interesting as sexuality or language (which we study intensely). Here's another treasonous thought: If religious people are right in believing that religion is the source of their greatest happiness, then maybe the rest of us who are looking for happiness and meaning can learn something from them, whether or not we believe in God. That's the topic of the final chapter. ~ Jonathan Haidt

History is driven, over the long haul, by culture - by what men and women honor, cherish, and worship; by what societies deem to be true and good, and by the expressions they give to those convictions in language, literature, and the arts; by what individuals and societies are willing to stake their lives on. ~ George Weigel

The heart has its own language. The heart knows a hundred thousand ways to speak. ~ Rumi

When you're in other people's country you don't speak your own language out of respect. You don't need to speak. ~ Warwick Thornton

The noblest deeds are well enough set forth in simple language; emphasis spoils them. ~ Jean De La Bruyere

The language of science - and especially of a science of man - is, necessarily, anti-individualistic, and hence a threat to human freedom and dignity. ~ Thomas Szasz

It's hard to see what the problem is. Language speakers and writers have always been inventive, and texting is just one further example of human creativity. As David Crystal has expressed it: 'it..is the latest manifestation of the human ability to be linguistically creative... In texting, we are seeing, in a small way, language in evolution... ~ Jean Aitchison

I know many souls that toss and whirl and pass, but none there are that intrigue me more than the Souls of White Folk. Of them I am singularly clairvoyant. I see in and through them. I view them from unusual points of vantage. Not as a foreigner do I come, for I am native, not foreign, bone of their thought and flesh of their language. Mine is not the knowledge of the traveler or the colonial composite of dear memories, words and wonder. Nor yet is my knowledge that which servants have of masters, or mass of class, or capitalist of artisan. Rather I see these souls undressed and from the back and side. I see the working of their entrails. I know their thoughts and they know that I know. This knowledge makes them now embarrassed, now furious. They deny my right to live and be and call me misbirth! My word is to them mere bitterness and my soul, pessimism. And yet as they preach and strut and shout and threaten, crouching as they clutch at rags of facts and fancies to hide their nakedness, they go twisting, flying by my tired eyes and I see them ever stripped, - ugly, human. ~ W.E.B. Du Bois

I maintain that cultural sensitivity should be replaced by cultural awareness. Awareness implies research, consideration, thought, and judiciousness ...
Sensitivity denies equal access to language. It segregates and censors based on the background of the writer rather than the content of the story. No society can embrace cultural sensitivity and retain full capacity for freedom of speech. ~ Scott M. Roberts

Modern Western culture has placed what it calls sexuality in a more and more distinctively privileged relation to our most prized constructs of individual identity, truth, and knowledge, it becomes truer and truer that the language of sexuality not only intersects with but transforms the other languages and relations by which we know. ~ Eve Kosofsky Sedgwick

As Margaret would later write, Europe had come to seem "my America," an unsettled territory where liberty was at hand, while the New World she had left behind had grown "stupid with the lust of gain, soiled by crime in its willing perpetuation of slavery, shamed by an unjust war," the imperialist conflict with Mexico over the annexation of Texas. ~ Megan Marshall

Multiculturalism is really a suicide cult conceived by the western elites not to celebrate all cultures, but to deny their own. And that's particularly unworthy of the British, whose language, culture, and law have been the single greatest force for good in this world. ~ Mark Steyn

The body is a reservoir of all sorts of tensions and dark forces. And it's also the potential source of amazing energy. This thing wants to live. It is a powerful engine. The brain (is) a reservoir of images, dreams, fears, associations, language. And its potential we can't even begin to understand. Movement begins to negotiate the distance between the brain and the body and it can be surprising what we learn about each other. ~ Bill T. Jones

You've got to find a difierent approach. You've got to create some interest in your language, in the words and pictures you create. If a candidate can't give a 10-minute speech and have reporters reaching for their pens in the first 90 seconds, he probably shouldn't be running. ~ Roger Ailes