The goal is to give people a free encyclopedia to every person in the world, in their own language. Not just in a ‘free beer’ kind of way, but also in the free speech kind of way. – Jimmy Wales
Chimps can do all sorts of things we thought that only we could do – like tool-making and abstraction and generalisation. They can learn a language – sign language – and they can use the signs. But when you think of our intellects, even the brightest chimp looks like a very small child. – Jane Goodall
Why are we reading a Shakespeare play or ‘Huckleberry Finn?’ Well, because these works are great, but they also tell us something about the times in which they were created. Unfortunately, previous eras and dead authors often used language or accepted as normal sentiments that we now find unacceptable. – Jane Smiley
We have language and they do not. Chimps communicate by embracing, patting, looking – all these things. And they have lots of sounds. But they cannot sit and discuss. They cannot teach about things that are not present, as far as we know. – Jane Goodall
Shakespeare’s language does not require a British accent. It requires a facility with language, and that’s all. – Joss Whedon
For the most part, I think of PC as meaning Plain Civil. You treat people the way you’d like to be treated yourself, and that means not using language that is demeaning. – Jay Parini
Yiddish, originally, in Eastern Europe was considered the language of children, of the illiterate, of women. And 500 years later, by the 19th century, by the 18th century, writers realized that, in order to communicate with the masses, they could no longer write in Hebrew. They needed to write in Yiddish, the language of the population. – Ilan Stavans
In Algeria, I had begun to get into literature and philosophy. I dreamed of writing-and already models were instructing the dream, a certain language governed it. – Jacques Derrida
Look at the coded language the Right is using against President Barack Obama. Openly calling him a liar in Congress, saying he is ‘not a Christian, he was not born here, he is not one of us.’ That makes addressing such issues trickier for the first African-American in the White House. – Jesse Jackson
Metaphors, similes, puns – all manner of metonymy – I’m interested in language that cannot be parsed by a machine – language that can only be understood through acculturation. – Joshua Cohen
Without computers, in the 17th century, we could classify the entire animal kingdom… there was this idea of the speciation, right? And now, all a search engine is is essentially the mathematical speciation of ideas – and these things really derive from the way that language is used and the way words relate. – Joshua Cohen
The way I mainly use the Internet is keeping in touch with poets that live far away. My main interest is contemporary American poets and some Spanish language poets, and I keep in touch with their work through either their websites or email. – John Burnside
I tried to take seriously the idea that if you tortured language you might arrive at some new truth. Later it became clear to me that I was retreading ground by fighting the literary battles of the 1950s and 1960s, and that I was actually a bit bored by some of the books I professed to love. – Hari Kunzru
Self-control is one mark of a mature person; it applies to control of language, physical treatment of others, and the appetites of the body. – Joseph B. Wirthlin
It seems likely that Jesus, being a scholarly young man, learned some Hebrew, but that’s conjecture. It’s more likely that Jesus spoke some Greek, as this language dominated the region after the conquests of Alexander the Great in the fourth century. – Jay Parini
Records have never really been my strong suit. I’ve always been a much better live act. I didn’t understand the language of the studio. You sing differently in a studio. The language, the craft – it’s just a whole different deal. I avoided the problem on my first record by doing a live album. – Jewel
Particularly for English people, Shakespeare is always at the forefront of both drama and the English language. He’s always been there. I can’t remember starting school and not learning about him. – Jamie Campbell Bower
I read ‘Sabella or The Blood Stone’ by Tanith Lee, which was hugely influential to me. I love Tanith’s writing. She’s just really lyrical, beautiful use of language. – Holly Black
A cliche is like a coin that has been handled too much. Once language has been overly handled, it no longer leaves a clear imprint. – Janet Fitch
One can say of language that it is potentially the only human home, the only dwelling place that cannot be hostile to man. – John Berger
The huge difference in my lifetime is that you can just go up to somebody and make a pass. You couldn’t do that in the 1950s if you were gay. There were secret handshakes, a secret language. There was nowhere you could go to be romantic outside of people’s houses. – Ian Mckellen
There are two possibilities: Either the kiss is a human universal, one of the constellation of innate traits, including language and laughter, that unites us as a species, or it is an invention, like fire or wearing clothes, an idea so good that it was bound to metastasize across the globe. – Joshua Foer
When I entered Bollywood, I didn’t have any advantage over anyone. I didn’t know how to act, I was not from the industry, I didn’t know the language, and I didn’t know how to dance. So, whatever films I was getting, I was just taking them up. – Jacqueline Fernandez
Humans are crude linguists from the moment of birth – and perhaps even in the womb – to the extent at least that we can hear spoken sounds and begin to recognize different combinations of language sounds. – Jeffrey Kluger
I belong to the Russian language. As to the state, from my point of view, the measure of a writer’s patriotism is not oaths from a high platform, but how he writes in the language of the people among whom he lives. – Joseph Brodsky
When I visited Ireland with my father and heard the people on the farm talking, I couldn’t believe the gift of language they had. I felt very untalented. – John Patrick Shanley
Twittering and blogging and all that is fine, but there is no idea of how to phrase something beautifully; how to use language to create an emotion. It’s just passing information and sometimes very superficial information. – Isabel Allende