Richard Leakey Quotes

The places I come from have such rich languages, such a variety of expression. In Sierra Leone we have about fifteen languages and three dialects. I grew up speaking about seven of them.

There are men of eighteen different languages; they are scattered here and there upon the [Hudson] river.

Languages are not owned by nations but by the people who use them and make them live.

Language is the crowning achievement of human beings, and that is something Muslims have always known and revered. We are a literate people whose miracle is a Book from an unlettered man, peace and blessings be upon him, who was the most articulate and eloquent human being who ever lived. We honor our Prophet, peace and blessings be upon him, in honoring language that he loved so much and used so well.

Language tethers us to the world; without it we spin like atoms.

European languages must not be considered diamonds displayed under a glass ball, dazzling us with their brilliance.

In my world, history comes down to language and art.

Speaking more than one language and living in a multicultural family and environment did not seem like anything but what it was: the world I lived in.

There are many languages in the world; in meaning all are the same. If you break the cups, water will be unified and will flow together.

Many of the most difficult questions concerning the role of ethnic minorities centers on language.

Language is the chief means and index of a nation's progress.

Only one thing remained reachable, close and secure amid all losses: language. Yes, language. In spite of everything, it remained secure against loss.

Africa. There are a gazillion different languages people speak there, different bone structures, so vast and different.

But Americans are different from everyone else in the world - except the Canadians, and Americans are more different from the Canadians than they often think.

Plurality of languages: [...] It is crucial 1. that there are many languages and that they differ not only in vocabulary, but also in grammar, and so in mode of thought and 2. that all languages are learnable.

English, no longer an English language, now grows from many roots.

French: why does this language even exist? Everyone there speaks english anyway.

To get rid of the infatuation for English is one of the essentials of Swaraj.

Language is as real, as tangible, in our lives as streets, pipelines, telephone switchboards, microwaves, radioactivity, cloning laboratories, nuclear power stations.

There's no such thing as dead languages, only dormant minds.

We can never know, for the good reason that writing is the destruction of every voice, every origin. Writing is that neuter, that composite, that obliquity into which our subject flees, the black-and-white where all identity is lost, beginning with the very identity of the body that writes.

I have a major problem with the division that occurs because of the division of language.

A language, like a species, when extinct, never... reappears.

Translation is the circulatory system of the world's literatures

Language does not stand still. Surprisingly, despite this knowledge, most speakers are fearful of change.