Quotes & Sayings About Language Diversity

If God had so wished, he could have made all Indians speak one language ... the unity of India has been and shall always be a unity in diversity. — Rabindranath Tagore

Keep your language. Love its sounds, its modulation, its rhythm. But try to march together with men of different languages, remote from your own, who wish like you for a more just and human world. — Helder Camara

The world of visual perspective is one of unified and homogeneous space. Such a world is alien to the resonating diversity of spoken words. So language was the last art to accept the visual logic of Gutenberg technology, and the first to rebound in the electric age. — Marshall McLuhan

Let us have but one end in view, the welfare of humanity; and let us put aside all selfishness in consideration of language, nationality, or religion. — John Amos Comenius

Every two weeks, a language dies. The world is diminished when it loses its human sayings, just as when it loses its diversity of plants and beasts. — Eduardo Galeano

Bound by a common identity grounded in language and history, the Arabs are all the more fascinating for their diversity. They are one people and many peoples at the same time. — Eugene Rogan

Same language, different dialects.
Same words, different pronunciation.
Same experiences, different reactions.
Same wisdom, different understanding.
Same knowledge, different application.
Same love, different expression.
Same ancestry, different races.
Same world, different people. — Matshona Dhliwayo

Be sure to enjoy language, experiment with ways of talking, be exuberant even when you don't feel like it because language can make your world a better place to live. — Deborah Levy

The laws of biology are written in the language of diversity. — E. O. Wilson

I tried to think the same thought in as many different religions as possible, so the thought itself wouldn't be limited by any particular way of reasoning, the way words restrict
the whole eskimo-seventeen-words-for-snow idea. — Patricia Geary

But as the old Confusion of tongues was laudable, when men who were of one language in wickedness and impiety, even as some now venture to be, were building the Tower; for by the confusion of their language the unity of their intention was broken up, and their undertaking destroyed; so much more worthy of praise is the present miraculous one. For being poured from One Spirit upon many men, it brings them again into harmony. And there is a diversity of Gifts, which stands in need of yet another Gift to discern which is the best, where all are praiseworthy. — Gregory Of Nazianzus

The issue here revolves around the "right to be different (Mattos 1994:16). People have difficulty living harmoniously with those who are different. Because of this, they discriminate against anyone who has any distinctive characteristic whether of belief, religion, language, thought or color. ~ Valmor Da Silva p. 124 in Reading Other-Wise — Gerald O. West

The geniuses of all ages and of all lands speak different languages but the same flame burns in them all. Oh, if you only knew what unearthly happiness my soul feels now from being able to understand them. — Anton Chekhov

In the spirit of being a reflective practitioner of ourselves we must notice your own behavior as an educator and realize how it influences other. Recognize your privileges: race, gender, ability, career, citizenship, language is all privilege. Imagine how you feel in the visitors shoes and adjust to best help them process and contextualize. — Monica O Montgomery

For if the Absolute has predicates, then there are predicates; but the proposition "there are predicates" is not one which the present theory can admit. We cannot escape by saying that the predicates merely qualify the Absolute; for the Absolute cannot be qualified by nothing, so that the proposition "there are predicates" is logically prior to the proposition "the Absolute has predicates". Thus the theory itself demands, as its logical prius, a proposition without a subject and a predicate; moreover this proposition involves diversity, for even if there be only one predicate, this must be different from the one subject. Again, since there is a predicate, the predicate is an entity, and its predicability of the Absolute is a relation between it and the Absolute. Thus the very proposition which was to be non-relational turns out to be, after all, relational, and to express a relation which current philosophical language would describe as purely external. — Bertrand Russell

I remember one night at Muzdalifa with nothing but the sky overhead I lay awake amid sleeping Muslim brothers and I learned that pilgrims from every land
every color, and class, and rank; high officials and the beggar alike
all snored in the same language. — Malcolm X

What is the bedrock on which all of our diverse trans populations can build solidarity? The commitment to be the best fighters against each other's oppression. As our activist network grows into marches and rallies of hundreds of thousands, we will hammer out language that demonstrates the sum total of our movement as well as its component communities.

Unity depends on respect for diversity, no matter what tools of language are ultimately used. This is a very early stage for trans peoples with such diverse histories and blends of cultures to form community. Perhaps we don't have to strive to be one community. In reality, there isn't one women's, or lesbian, gay, bi community. What is realistic is the goal to build a coalition between our many strong communities in order to form a movement capable of defending all our lives. — Leslie Feinberg

Furniture or gold can be taken away from you, but knowledge and a new language can easily be taken from one place to the other, and nobody can take them away from you. — David Schwarzer

January 20, 2009, was also the first time a newly elected president used the occasion sometimes called a secular sermon to the nation to give voice to the diversity of religious life among its people. "We are a nation of Christians and Muslims," Obama said, "Jews and Hindus, and nonbelievers. We are shaped by every language and culture, drawn from every end of this Earth. — Peter Manseau

The diversity of language alienates man from man — Saint Augustine

I can see that 'Switched at Birth' is attracting audiences because of the diversity and the American Sign Language as well. American Sign Language is such a beautiful language, and people want more of that. — Sean Berdy

Great is language ... it is the mightiest of the sciences,
It is the fulness and color and form and diversity of the earth ... and of men and women ... and of all qualities and processes;
It is greater than wealth ... it is greater than buildings or ships or religions or paintings or music. — Walt Whitman

No nation can survive without passing its heritage, language and, yes, faith to the next generation. A country must be built on something substantial and if the cultural elitists think it can be built on 'diversity,' that is a foundation of shifting sand. — Cal Thomas

If we lived in a democratic state our language would have to hurtle, fly, curse, and sing, in all the common American names, all the undeniable and representative and participating voices of everybody here. — June Jordan

Not to Learn Irish is to miss the opportunity of understanding what life in this country has meant and could mean in a better future. It is to cut oneself off from ways of being at home. If we regard self-understanding, mutual understanding, imaginative enhancement, cultural diversity and a tolerant political atmosphereas a desirable attainments, we should remember that a knowledge of the Irish language is an essential element in their realisation. — Seamus Heaney

Language has everything to do with oppression and liberation. When the word "victory" means conquer vs. harmony and the word "equality" means homogenization vs. unity in/through diversity, then the liberation of a people from a "minority" class to "communal stakeholders" becomes much more difficult. Oppression has deep linguistic roots. We see it in conversations which interchange the idea of struggle with suffering in order to normalize abuse. We are the creators of our language, and our definitions shape the perceptions we have of the world. The first step to ending oppression is finding a better method of communication which is not solely dependent on a language rooted in the ideology of oppressive structures. — Cristina Marrero

America's strength is not our diversity; our strength is our ability to unite people of different backgrounds around common principles. A common language is necessary to reach that goal. — Ernest Istook

1. Decrease current human population below five hundred million and keep it in perpetual balance with nature. 2. Guide reproduction wisely - improving fitness and diversity. 3. Unite humanity with a "living" new language. 4. Redistribute global wealth under the more acceptable term "global public goods." 5. Rebalance personal rights with "social duties." 6. Replace passion, faith, and tradition with reason. 7. Make clever use of new technologies to go around national governments and establish direct ties with citizens. 8. Rebrand global governance as equitable, efficient, and the logical next step in human evolution. 9. Discredit, delegitimize, and dismantle the idea of the nation state/national sovereignty. 10. Prepare a mechanism to neutralize any challenges to United Nations' authority. — Brad Thor

Chaucer's world in The Canterbury Tales brings together, for the first time, a diversity of characters, social levels, attitudes, and ways of life. The tales themselves make use of a similarly wide range of forms and styles, which show the diversity of cultural influences which the author had at his disposal. Literature, with Chaucer, has taken on a new role: as well as affirming a developing language, it is a mirror of its times - but a mirror which teases as it reveals, which questions while it narrates, and which opens up a range of issues and questions, instead of providing simple, easy answers. — Ronald Carter

As technological civilization diminishes the biotic diversity of the earth, language itself is diminished. As there are fewer and fewer songbirds in the air, due to the destruction of their forests and wetlands, human speech loses more and more of its evocative power. For when we no longer hear the voices of warbler and wren, our own speaking can no longer be nourished by their cadences. As the splashing speech of the rivers is silenced by more and more dams, as we drive more and more of the land's wild voices into the oblivion of extinction, our own languages become increasingly impoverished and weightless, progressively emptied of their earthly resonance.17 — David Abram

Beneath the uniformity that unites us in communication there is a chaotic personal diversity of connections, and, for each of us, the connections continue to evolve. No two of us learn our language alike, nor, in a sense, does any finish learning it while he lives. — Willard Van Orman Quine

Can we reconcile indefinitely these two imperatives: the desire to preserve every individual's special identity and the need for Europeans to be able to communicate with one another all the time and as freely as possible? We cannot leave it to time to solve the dilemma and prevent people from engaging, a few years hence, in bitter and fruitless linguistic conflicts. We know all too well what time will do.
The only possible answer is a voluntary policy aimed at strengthening linguistic diversity and based on a simple idea: nowadays everybody obviously needs three languages. The first is his language of identity; the third is English. Between the two we have to promote a third language, freely chosen, which will often but not always be another European language. This will be for everyone the main foreign language taught at school, but it will also be much more than that
the language of the heart, the adopted language, the language you have married, the language you love. — Amin Maalouf

We must embrace our differences, even celebrate our diversity. We must glory in the fact that God created each of us as unique human beings. God created us different, but God did not create us for separation. God created us different that we might recognize our need for one another. We must reverence our uniqueness, reverence everything that makes us what we are: our language, our culture, our religious tradition. — Desmond Tutu

The fantastically wasteful prodigality of human tongues, the Babel enigman, points to a vital multiplication of mortal liberties. Each language speaks the world in its own ways. Each edifies worlds and counter-worlds in its own mode. The polyglot is a freer man. — George Steiner

If the humanities were science, the vocabularies of the world's languages would add up, not overlap. — Thorsten J. Pattberg