Humboldt Language Quotes & Sayings

Language is deeply entwined in the intellectual development of humanity itself, it accompanies the latter upon every step of its localized progression or regression; moreover, the pertinent cultural level in each case is recognizable in it ... Language is, as it were, the external manifestation of the minds of peoples. Their language is their soul, and their soul is their language. It is impossible to conceive them ever sufficiently identical ... The creation of language is an innate necessity of humanity. It is not a mere external vehicle, designed to sustain social intercourse, but an indispensable factor for the development of human intellectual powers, culminating in the formulation of philosophical doctrine. — Wilhelm Von Humboldt

Alexander von Humboldt's wide-ranging Views of Nature is a masterpiece of nineteenth-century natural history, at once science and art. Mark W. Person's stunning new translation makes the wonders of this classic accessible to the English-language world of the present. — Daniel Walker Howe

Absolutely nothing is so important for a nation's culture as its language. — Wilhelm Von Humboldt

One must not consider a language as a product dead, and formed but once; it is an animate being, and ever creative. Human thought elaborates itself with the progress of intelligence; and of this thought language is a manifestation. An idiom cannot therefore remain stationary; it walks, it develops, it grows up, it fortifies itself, it becomes old, and it reaches decrepitude. — Wilhelm Von Humboldt

Language is the spiritual exhalation of the nation. — Wilhelm Von Humboldt

Samskrit is the unsurpassed zenith in the whole development of languages yet known to us. — Wilhelm Von Humboldt

Language makes infinite use of finite media. — Wilhelm Von Humboldt

Humboldt's early biographer, F.A. Schwarzenberg, subtitled his life of Humboldt What May Be Accomplished in a Lifetime. He summarised the areas of his subject's extraordinary curiosity as follows: '1) The knowledge of the Earth and its inhabitants. 2) The discovery of the higher laws of nature, which govern the universe, men, animals, plants, minerals. 3) The discovery of new forms of life. 4) The discovery of territories hitherto but imperfectly known, and their various productions. 5)
The acquaintance with new species of the human race
their manners, their language and the historical traces of their culture.'
What may be accomplished in a lifetime
and seldom or never is. — Alain De Botton