A precise language awaits a completed metaphysics.
— Alfred North Whitehead
Philosophy
The mentality of mankind and the language of mankind created each other. If we like to assume the rise of language as a given fact, then it is not going too far to say that the souls of men are the gift from language to mankind. The account of the sixth day should be written: He gave them speech, and they became souls.
— Alfred North Whitehead
Philosophy
Generous, adj. Originally this word meant noble by birth and was rightly applied to a great multitude of persons. It now means noble by nature and is taking a bit of a rest.
— Ambrose Bierce
Generosity
I am the one who has felt most deeply the stuttering of the tongue in its relation to thought.
The more elevated a culture, the richer its language. The number of words and their combinations depends directly on a sum of conceptions and ideas; without the latter there can be no understandings, no definitions, and, as a result, no reason to enrich a language.
I don't wish to go down to posterity talking bad grammar.
— Benjamin Disraeli
Literature
In a logically perfect language, there will be one word and no more for every simple object, and everything that is not simple will be expressed by a combination of words, by a combination derived, of course, from the words for the simple things that enter in, one word for each simple component.
— Bertrand Russell
Philosophy
Written words differ from spoken words in being material structures. A spoken word is a process in the physical world, having an essential time-order; a written word is a series of pieces of matter, having an essential space-order.
— Bertrand Russell
Knowledge
Look out how you use proud words. They wear long boots, hard boots.