Robert Lane Greene Quotes

Like so many of his successors in the language-crank world today, though, (Jonathan) Swift not only loathes (the) banal and common change (language); he ascribes it to moral failing.

His captivating speech came not from his grammar or vocabulary but from the joy he took in wielding them well.

Language is not law; it is in fact a lot like music. Speech is jazz – first you learn the basic rules, and then you become good enough to improvise all the time. Writing is somewhat more like classical composition, where established forms and conditions will hold greater sway.

Too many people are too angry about language too much of the time. This time could be better spent listening, learning, and enjoying the vast variety of human language around them.

To most of the general public, language comes down less to wonder than a rather censorious bifurcated sentiment – namely, that the vast majority of the world's humans either speak and something primitive or speak something badly.

Americans tend to use "nation" as a synonym for "country." But political scientists and historians, as well as many Europeans, tend to use the term for a much more specific phenomenon: a group of people who feel they belong together, whether they have a country of their own or not.

Standard languages are inventions, most of them confined to a recent period in human history. They are codes that give access not to clear thinking and basic decency but to the structured parts of our lives such as job interviews, political speeches, literary essays, novels, and the like. They signal education and learning, but they are not the same thing as education and learning.

Afrikaans was the language of the white minority in South Africa, and the forced learning of it created resentment among blacks. Even so, Nelson Mandela made it a point to learn this language in prison in anticipation that it would help him lead the whole of South Africa.