Viewed freely, the English language is the accretion and growth of every dialect, race, and range of time, and is both the free and compacted composition of all. — Walt Whitman
Where shall we look for standard English, but to the words of a standard man? — Henry David Thoreau
The English language is rather like a monster accordion, stretchable at the whim of the editor, compressible ad lib. — Robert Burchfield
The English language is nobody's special property. It is the property of the imagination: it is the property of the language itself. — Derek Walcott
We don't just borrow words; on occasion, English has pursued other languages down alleyways to beat them unconscious and rifle their pockets for new vocabulary. — Booker T. Washington
The hottest new programming language is English. — Andrej Karpathy
We have this wonderful language and we don't appreciate it. That's old-fashioned me, but when I went to school, everyone had elocution lessons, not to sound posh but so you could be understood. — Penelope Keith
England and America are two countries separated by the same language. — George Bernard Shaw
Speaks cheerful English and in the past has written this language with a paintbrush that talks. — Jimmy Breslin
The most significant event of the 20th century will be the fact that the North Americans speak English. — Otto von Bismarck
Mind you, the Elizabethans had so many words for the female genitals that it is quite hard to speak a sentence of modern English without inadvertently mentioning at least three of them. — Terry Pratchett
Mind you, the Elizabethans had so many words for the female genitals that it is quite hard to speak a sentence of modern English without inadvertently mentioning at least three of them. — Terry Prachett
Good English, well spoken and well written will open more doors than a college degree... Bad English will slam doors you don't even know exist. — William Raspberry
England has two books, the Bible and Shakespeare. England made Shakespeare,but the Bible made England. — Victor Hugo
Civilization -- a heap of rubble scavenged by scrawny English Lit. vultures. — Malcolm Muggeridge
English Language Quotes
The most terrifying words in the English language are: I'm from the government and I'm here to help. — Ronald Reagan
The basis of any independent government is a national language, and we can no longer continue aping our former colonizers ... those who feel they cannot do without English can as well pack up and go. — Jomo Kenyatta
Many people do not know that Jesus did not speak Latin or English or Hebrew; he spoke Aramaic. But nobody knows that language. So we're talking about the Bible itself being a translation of a translation of a translation. And, in reality, it has affected people's lives in history. — Ngugi wa Thiong'o
Never make fun of someone who speaks broken English. It means they know another language.
In language gender is particularly confusing. Why, please, should a table be male in German, female in French, and castrated in English? — Marlene Dietrich
I can fluently speak five languages: English, emoji, sexting, sarcasm and sass. — Tyler Oakley
I was wondering why I was put in prison for working in an African language when I had not been put in prison for working in English. So really, in prison I started thinking more seriously about the relation between language and power. — Ngugi wa Thiong'o
It seems to me that once if your life before you die you ought to see a country where they don't talk in English and don't even want to.
Never make fun of someone who speaks broken English. It means they know another language. — H. Jackson Brown, Jr.
FEAR is an acronym in the English language for 'False Evidence Appearing Real'. — Neale Donald Walsch
Like, What is the least often heard sentence in the English language? That would be: Say, isn't that the banjo player's Porsche parked outside? — Jackson Browne
My favorite three words in the English language are: ’I don’t know’, because every time I say them, I learn something new. — Timothy Leary
American English Quotes
All I can say in my solitude is, May Heaven's rich blessing come down on every one - American, English, Turk - who will help to heal this open sore of the world. — David Livingstone
Eventually, in '84, we made a film for a little over a million dollars - with American actors that was shot in English - that was shown in Finland A little action film called Born American. — Renny Harlin
Black-and-white always looks modern, whatever that word means.
The German intellect wants the French sprightliness, the fine practical understanding of the English, and the American adventure; but it has a certain probity, which never rests in a superficial performance, but asks steadily, To what end? A German public asks for a controlling sincerity. — Ralph Waldo Emerson
We have room but for one Language here and that is the English Language, for we intend to see that the crucible turns our people out as Americans of American nationality and not as dwellers in a polyglot boarding-house. — Theodore Roosevelt
This African American Vernacular English shares most of its grammar and vocabulary with other dialects of English. But it is distinct in many ways, and it is more different from standard English than any other dialect spoken in continental North America. — William Labov
Assange is not a 'journalist' any more than the 'editor' of al-Qaeda's new English-language magazine 'Inspire' is a 'journalist.' He is an anti-American operative with blood on his hands. — Sarah Palin
MUSTANG, n. An indocile horse of the western plains. In English society, the American wife of an English nobleman. — Ambrose Bierce
I could speak to you and say, 'Laytay-chai, paisey, paisey.' ... Why aren't you responding? Oh, you don't speak Swahili. Well, I've got news for you. The dog doesn't speak English, or American, or Spanish, or French. — Ian Dunbar
Of course I wrote most of the Constitution myself. I remember hesitating for a long time over the US presidential system. But it wouldn't have done - we were too trained in English democracy to sit down under a dictatorship which is what the American system really is. — Eamon de Valera
Modern Languages Quotes
I think that modern physics has definitely decided in favor of Plato. In fact the smallest units of matter are not physical objects in the ordinary sense; they are forms, ideas which can be expressed unambiguously only in mathematical language. — Werner Heisenberg
I notice that you use plain, simple language, short words and brief sentences. That is the way to write English - it is the modern way and the best way. Stick to it; don't let fluff and flowers and verbosity creep in. — Mark Twain
Although the Irish language is connected with the many recollections that twine around the hearts of Irishmen, yet the superior utility of the English tongue, as the medium of all modern communication, is so great that I can witness without a sigh the gradual decline of the Irish language. — Daniel O'Connell
The wildest ride in modern crime novel exoticum. A novel so steeped in milieu that it feels as if you've blasted to mars in the grip of a demon who won't let you go. Read this book, savor the language-it's the last-and the most compelling word in thrillers. — James Ellroy
The language of theism which was familiar to the people, gave Gandhi the advantage of easy communication with the people, but it is atheistic in principle. It could have been the starting point for the atheistic movement in the modern age. — Goparaju Ramachandra Rao
As thy days, so shall thy strength be which, in modern language, may be translated as thy thoughts so shall thy life be. — Emmet Fox
The soul is something which contains the body. The body doesn't contain the soul. The soul, if we put it into modern language, is the entire complex of relationships in whose context this organism exists. — Alan Watts
Think about Elizabethan English, where the entire English language behaved pretty much like molten lava, like a volcano in mid-eruption. Modern Hebrew has some things in common with Elizabethan English. It is being reshaped and it's expanding very rapidly in various directions. — Amos Oz
Only in England is the perversion of language regarded as a victory for democracy. — Anthony Burgess
The language of art is powerful to those who understand it, and puzzling to those who do not. What we do know is that here was the modern human mind at work, spinning symbolism and abstraction in a way that only Homo sapiens is capable of doing. — Richard Leakey
Modern Culture Quotes
The old Lakota was wise. He knew that man's heart, away from nature, becomes hard; he knew that lack of respect for growing, living things soon led to lack of respect for humans too. — Luther Standing Bear
One needs solitude and quiet to think. The cacophony of modern culture is designed to make that impossible. — Chris Hedges
Perhaps these ancient observatories like Stonehenge perennially impress modern people because modern people have no idea how the Sun, Moon, or stars move. We are too busy watching evening television to care what's going on in the sky. — Neil deGrasse Tyson
The Church cannot be content to live in its stained-glass house and throw stones through the picture window of modern culture. — Robert McAfee Brown
The equilibrium you admire in me is an unstable one, difficult to maintain. My inner life was split early between the call of the Ancestors and the call of Europe, between the exigencies of black-African culture and those of modern life. — Leopold Sedar Senghor
Forty-hour workweeks are a relic of the Industrial Age. — Naval Ravikant
I really like the city of Vienna. I like its art, its music and its architecture. In short, I like the culture that Vienna represents. What really captures me is the period around 1900 - the time of Freud, Schnitzler and Klimt. This is the period in which the modern view of mind was born. — Eric Kandel
Knowledge was inherent in all things. The world was a library. — Luther Standing Bear
I love and admire the American culture and the American dream. I learnt so many things about the American shoe industry and marketing strategies. I caught the secrets of American casual wear, that is elegant and wearable, retro and modern, and mixed it with an Italian touch, luxurious and handmade. — Diego Della Valle
Superheroes fill a gap in the pop culture psyche, similar to the role of Greek mythology. There isn't really anything else that does the job in modern terms. For me, Batman is the one that can most clearly be taken seriously. — Christopher Nolan
Modern-day Quotes
Posterity will one day laugh at the sublime foolishness of the modern materialistic philosophy. The more I study nature, the more I stand amazed at the work of the Creator. I pray while I am engaged at my work in the laboratory. — Louis Pasteur
Nothing happens just because we are aware of modern day slavery, but nothing will ever happen until we are. — Sayings
Social media is natural to me, and it's a very immediate way of saying something. It's the way politics are done these days. In modern politics, you can't ignore that even if you wanted to. I can't imagine doing politics without it. — Nicola Sturgeon
The flat-brimmed cap is the modern day dunce cap. — Daniel Tosh
It's almost like these games are the modern day comic books, especially when you play Alone in the Dark. There's a real story that goes along with it and a movie seemed like the right kind of transition to make. — Christian Slater
Practical knowledge is the backbone of modern-day businesses. — Vladimer Botsvadze
The modern patriotism, the true patriotism, the only rational patriotism is loyalty to the Nation all the time, loyalty to the Government when it deserves it. — Mark Twain
Not since the days of slavery have there been so many people who feel entitled to what other people have produced as there are in the modern welfare state, whether in Western Europe or on this side of the Atlantic. — Thomas Sowell
Your habits are modern-day solutions to ancient desires. New versions of old vices. — James Clear
If there was a volcano under their feet, a Vesuvius that could erupt and bury this modern-day Pompeii at any moment, the best thing to do was dance on it. — Deborah Davis
Standard English Quotes
Because of the way our society is structures, using sentences such as "I don't it" can put people at a disadvantage. And this is, of course, why teachers have to give students access to Standard English, in order to protect them against this sort of prejudice. — Kate Burridge
I've come across a novel called The Palm-Wine Drinkard, by the Nigerian writer Amos Tutuola, that is really remarkable because it is a kind of fantasy of West African mythology all told in West African English which, of course, is not the same as standard English. — William Golding
All messages from Satan are played forward and are in standard American English. — George Carlin
An English tongue, if refined to a certain standard, might perhaps be fixed forever. — Jonathan Swift
That mainstream English is essential to our self-preservation is indisputable . . . but it is not necessary to abandon Spoken Soul to master Standard English, any more than it is necessary to abandon English to learn French or to deprecate jazz to appreciate classical music. — John R. Rickford
Actually John, Paul Rutherford, and Trevor Watts, and several other rather well known English jazz musicians had got their training by joining the Air Force, which was a pretty standard way for people to get some kind of musical education in those days. — Evan Parker
People think of black English as ungrammatical, but it bears the same relationship to standard English as contemporary Hebrew does to ancient Hebrew. — John H. McWhorter
In a couple of Ahdaf Soueif's novels, she gets at the certain kind of English that's being spoken by Egyptians. It's a beautiful, expressive English but it is non-standard, "broken" English that happens to be efficient, eloquent, and communicates perfectly well even if it is breaking rules. — Elliott Colla
Through radio I look forward to a United States of the World. Radio is standardizing the peoples of the Earth, English will become the universal language because it is predominantly the language of the ether. The most important aspect of radio is its sociological influence. (1926) — Arthur E. Kennelly
Through radio I look forward to a united states of the world. Radio is standardizing the peoples of the earth, English will become the universal language because it is predominantly the language of the ether. The most important aspect of radio is its sociological influence — Arthur Edwin Kennelly
Modern Education Quotes
Look on education as something between the child's soul and God. Modern Education tends to look on it as something between the child's brain and the standardized test. — Charlotte Mason
The most important Christian Education institution is not the pulpit or the school, important as those institutions are; but it is the Christian family. And that institution has to a very large extent ceased to do its work. — John Gresham Machen
Education technology and school construction go together. Modernization, updating education facilities, and making a capital investment in education are all included. — Major Owens
Literacy is a bridge from misery to hope. — Kofi Annan
Lots of literacy in modern society, but not enough numeracy. — Naval Ravikant
Modern education is like being taken to the world's greatest restaurant & being forced to eat the menu. — Murray Gell-Mann
The so-called modern education, with all its defects, however, does others so much more good than it does the Negro, because it has been worked out in conformity to the needs of those who have enslaved and oppressed weaker peoples. — Carter G. Woodson
We live in a society exquisitely dependent on science and technology and yet have cleverly arranged things so that almost no one understands science and technology. — Carl Sagan
I’m not saying that you have to be a reader to save your soul in the modern world. I’m saying it helps. — Walter Mosley
Modern Literature Quotes
Books are the carriers of civilization. Without books, history is silent. — Henry David Thoreau
I studied English literature in the honors program, which means that you had to take courses in various centuries. You had to start with Old English, Middle English, and work your way toward the modern. I figured if I did that it would force me to read some of the things I might not read on my own. — Jeffrey Eugenides
Attention-deficit disorders seem to abound in modern society, and we don't know the cause. — Marilyn vos Savant
In the morning I bathe my intellect in the stupendous and cosmogonal philosophy of the Bhagavad-Gita, in comparison with which our modern world and its literature seems puny and trivial. — Henry David Thoreau
Perversity is the muse of modern literature. — Susan Sontag
All modern American literature comes from one book by Mark Twain called Huckleberry Finn. — Ernest Hemingway
Without books, history is silent, literature dumb, science crippled. — Barbara Tuchman
Magic Realism is not new. The label's new, the specific Latin American form of it is new, its modern popularity is new, but it's been around as long as literature has been around. — Terri Windling
I love the Russian classics very much, the Russian classical literature. But I also read modern literature. As far as Russian literature is concerned, I am very fond of Tolstoy and Chekhov, and I also enjoy reading Gogol very much. — Vladimir Putin
Modern Poetry Quotes
You have to really dive deep back into yourself and get rid of so much modern analytical categorization. It's one of the great things poetry does. — Robert Morgan
You know I have about the same interest in jewelry as I have in politics, horse racing, modern poetry, and women who need weird excitement – none. — Cary Grant
Too many people in the modern world view poetry as a luxury, not a necessity like petrol. But to me it's the oil of life. — John Betjeman
Most poetry is very formal, but when a modern poet is formal he gets more attention for it than old poets did. — Robert Lowell
High and low culture come together in all Post Modern art, and American poetry is not excluded from this. — Diane Wakoski
Modern poetry, for me, began not in English at all but in Spanish, in the poems of Lorca. — W. S. Merwin
The way in which modern German poetry follows theories reminds me of pupils who, scolded by their teacher for their insubordination, justify themselves by saying that they invented new rules of propriety according to which they are quite well- behaved. — Franz Grillparzer
The reason modern poetry is difficult is so that the poet's wife cannot understand it. — Wendy Cope
I think that one possible definition of our modern culture is that it is one in which nine-tenths of our intellectuals can't read any poetry. — Randall Jarrell
I had art as a major, along with English, French and History. I had dance, modern dance. In English I was allowed to write my own poetry, which I eventually got published. — Sally Kirkland
Modern Era Quotes
How the modern Left thinks about causation: Joe Rogan is responsible for killing people by virtue of conducting interviews, but Fauci is absolutely blameless despite lifting the Obama-era ban on gain-of-function research and funding the Wuhan lab. — David O. Sacks
Bitcoin is the first software network capable of storing all the monetary energy in the world with no loss of power over time and negligible transmission loss. Assuming broad adoption, that would make it the most valuable invention of the modern era. Few understand this. — Michael Saylor
In the modern era, our nation experienced constant hardship and difficulties. The Chinese nation reached the most dangerous period. Since then, countless people with lofty ideals to realize the great revival of the Chinese nation rose to resist and fight, but failed one time after another. — Xi Jinping
The task of the modern era was the realization and humanization of God – the transformation and dissolution of theology into anthropology. — Ludwig Feuerbach
The best, most successful managers in the modern era are those who can keep a player happy even if he is not in the team. Given the size of the squads and the use of rotation nowadays, that's tougher than it's ever been. — Gary Lineker
We are living in a Millennial culture that is attacking "patriarchy." The culture in America as zeroed in, and it's been going on and it's been building since the modern era of the feminazis began, since the late sixties and early seventies. — Rush Limbaugh
In the modern era, it isn't enough to write, you must also be the Writer, with a capital 'W,' and play your part as the protagonist in the cautionary narrative in which you will fail or triumph, be in or out, hot or cold, ride the wheel of fortune. — Tony Kushner
AB de Villers is the most complete player of the Modern Era. — V. V. S. Laxman
It's impossible in our postmodern era for anyone to be original - for anybody to do what Jackson Pollock did. — Irving Sandler
The Olympic Games of the Modern Era began in 1896 in the city of Athens. — Bill Toomey
Friends, Romans, Countrymen, lend me your ears. — Mark Antony
You might sooner get lightning out of incense smoke than true action or passion out of your modern English religion. — John Ruskin
Friends, Romans, countrymen, lend me your ears; I come to bury Caesar, not to praise him. — William Shakespeare
Cry havoc and let slip the dogs of war! — William Shakespeare
The characteristic merit of the English constitutions is, that its dignified parts are very complicated and somewhat imposing, very old and rather venerable, while its efficient part, at least when in great and critical action, is decidedly simple and modern. — Walter Bagehot
Default is not in our stars, but in ourselves. — Paul Krugman
The great misfortune of the modern English is not at all that they are more boastful than other people (they are not); it is that they are boastful about those particular things which nobody can boast of without losing them. — Gilbert K. Chesterton
In addition to English, at least one ancient language, probably Greek or Hebrew, and two modern languages would be required. — W. H. Auden
Modern English, especially written English, is full of bad habits which spread by imitation and which can be avoided if one is willing to take the necessary trouble. — George Orwell
If you go through any newspaper or magazine and look for active, kicking verbs in the sentences, you will realize that this lack of well used verbs is the main trouble with modern English writing. Almost all nonfiction nowadays is written in a sort of pale, colorless sauce of passives and infinitives, motionless and flat as paper. — Rudolf Flesch
Even modern English people are imperious, superior, ridden by class. All of the hypocrisy and the difficulties that are endemic in being British also make it an incredibly fertile place culturally. A brilliant place to live. Sad but true. — Pete Townshend
The great watershed of modern poetry is French, more than English. — Robert Morgan
Men must speak English who can write Sanskrit; they must speak a modern language who write, perchance, an ancient and universal one. — Henry David Thoreau
At the age of 12 I won the school prize for Best English Essay. The prize was a copy of Somerset Maugham's 'Introduction To Modern English And American Literature.' To this day I keep it on the shelf between my collection of Forester's works and the little urn that contains my mother's ashes. — Wilbur Smith
I'm English enough to feel something of a gut-reaction to modernism, to continental philosophising and anything that smacks of a refusal to pay attention to the forensics: the empirical facts on the ground. — Will Self
Is it surprising that modern English land law should resemble a chaos rather than a system? — Edward Jenks
I would say that the writers I like and trust have at the base of their prose something called the English sentence. An awful lot of modern writing seems to me to be a depressed use of language. Once, I called it "vow-of-poverty prose." No, give me the king in his countinghouse. Give me Updike. — Martin Amis
He was the product of an English public school and university. He was, moreover, a modern product of those seats of athletic exercise. He had little education and highly developed muscles -- that is to say, he was no scholar, but essentially a gentleman. — H. Seton Merriman
The great British Library -- one of these sequestered pools of obsolete literature to which modern authors repair, and draw buckets full of classic lore, or pure English, undefiled wherewith to swell their own scanty rills of thought. — Washington Irving
The young specialist in English Lit, ... lectured me severely on the fact that in every century people have thought they understood the Universe at last, and in every century they were proved to be wrong. It follows that the one thing we can say about our modern 'knowledge' is that it is wrong.
... My answer to him was, ... when people thought the Earth was flat, they were wrong. When people thought the Earth was spherical they were wrong. But if you think that thinking the Earth is spherical is just as wrong as thinking the Earth is flat, then your view is wronger than both of them put together. — Isaac Asimov
All of which suggested literary translation, and Korean seemed a good bet - barely anything available in English, yet it was a modern, developed country, so the work had to be out there, plus the rarity would make it both easier to secure a student grant and more of a niche when it came to work. — Deborah Smith
The young specialist in English Lit, ...lectured me severely on the fact that in every century people have thought they understood the Universe at last, and in every century they were proved to be wrong. It follows that the one thing we can say about our modern "knowledge" is that it is wrong. — Isaac Asimov
Modern English, especially written English, is full of bad habits which spread by imitation and which can be avoided if one is willing to take the necessary trouble. If one gets rid of these habits one can think more clearly, and to think clearly is a necessary first step toward political regeneration: so that the fight against bad English is not frivolous and is not the exclusive concern of professional [or scholarly] writers. — George Orwell
I think Lucy Ferry, now Birley, is absolutely beautiful. She's a modern girl, but she moves beautifully. Amanda [Harlech] moves beautifully when she's not working. All those English leftover society girls. — Manolo Blahnik
The modern haematologist, instead of describing in English what he can see, prefers to describe in Greek what he can’t. — Richard Asher
The oligarchic character of the modern English commonwealth does not rest, like many oligarchies, on the cruelty of the rich to the poor. It does not even rest on the kindness of the rich to the poor. It rests on the perennial and unfailing kindness of the poor to the rich. — Gilbert K. Chesterton
It was not long before English Law took the one step needed to produce the modern scheme of legal remedies. And when it did, it used the Writ of Trespass as the starting point. — Edward Jenks
From the Latin word "imponere", base of the obsolete English "impone" and translated as "impress" in modern English, Nordic hackers have coined the terms "imponator" (a device that does nothing but impress bystanders, referred to as the "imponator effect") and "imponade" (that "goo" that fills you as you get impressed with something - from "marmelade", often referred as "full of imponade", always ironic). — Erik Naggum
Among those today who believe that modern poetry must do without rhyme or metre, there is an assumption that the alternative to free verse is a crash course in villanelles, sestinas and other such fixed forms. But most... are rare in English poetry. Few poets have written a villanelle worth reading, or indeed regret not having done so. — James Fenton
It's an absurd error to put modern English literature in the curriculum. You should read contemporary literature for pleasure or not at all. You shouldn't be taught to monkey with it. — Rebecca West
It's more than usually possible that I won't do a play again. But Skylight is one of the great plays in the English language. I was lucky enough to be a part of it at one point in its life, and it's a timely thing to deliver it again in the modern world. — Bill Nighy
I was at university and I was studying modern drama and studying English, and I just was like, 'I don't wanna be in this place. I wanna be acting.' — Melanie Lynskey
I believe it is imperative to see modern English grammar as a rich and diverse linguistic system deposited on our [England's] shores 1,500 years ago, and left with us unweakened, though substantially changed by the social and political events of the intervening period. — Robert Burchfield
Forcing modern speakers of English to not - whoops, not to split an infinitive because it isn't done in Latin makes about as much sense as forcing modern residents of England to wear laurels and togas. — Sayings
What is the English for 'Refreshing towelette'? — Mary Wakefield
The great British Library --an immense collection of volumes of all ages and languages, many of which are now forgotten, and most of which are seldom read: one of these sequestered pools of obsolete literature to which modern authors repair, and draw buckets full of classic lore, or pure English, undefiled wherewith to swell their own scanty rills of thought. — Washington Irving
Absolutely, but let me qualify that - I consider myself an authentic feminist. Not as defined by the modern movement. And, let me clarify that a little bit more. I was an English major, so break it down: -ist means one who celebrates. As a feminist, I celebrate my femininity. — Christine O'Donnell
In Conclusion
Which quotation resonated with you best? Did you enjoy our collection of modern english quotes? Or may be you have a slogan about modern english to suggest. Let us know using our contact form.
Citation
Feel free to cite and use any of the quotes in this collection of modern english quotations. For popular citation styles(APA, Chicago, MLA), please use this citation page.
