Polyglot Quotes & Sayings

... our world did not fall because we did not believe in fairness ... our world fell because it could no longer support the enormous weight we had put upon it, in the name of fairness. — Leot Felton

But this is predicated upon the man's becoming in very fact an American and nothing but an American. If he tries to keep segregated with men of his own origin and separated from the rest of America, then he isn't doing his part as an American. There can be no divided allegiance here ... We have room for but 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; and we have room for but one soul loyalty, and that is loyalty to the American people. — Theodore Roosevelt

European languages and a Google app can now turn your words into a foreign language, either in text form or as an electronic voice. Skype, an internet-telephony service, said recently that it would offer much the same (in English and Spanish only). But claims that such technological marvels will spell the end of old-fashioned translation businesses are premature. Software can give the gist of a foreign tongue, but for business use (if executives are sensible), rough is not enough. And polyglot programs are a pinprick in a vast industry. The business of translation, interpreting and software localisation (revising websites, apps and the like for use in a foreign language) generates revenues of $37 billion a year, reckons Common Sense Advisory (CSA), a consulting firm. — Anonymous

Everything can be forgiven in this world, save telling the truth. — Carlos Ruiz Zafon

The Hellenistic world was international to a degree, polyglot and inspired by many religious faiths ... the Greek ideals were pagan and the Hellenistic age witnessed their death struggle against Asiatic and Egyptian mysteries , on the one side, and against Judaism , on the other. — George Sarton

In 'Blade Runner,' the here is quite enough: a vision of dark, cramped, urban squalor. This is Los Angeles in the year 2019, when most of the earth's inhabitants have colonized other planets, and only a polyglot refuse heap of humanity remains. Los Angeles is a Japanized nighttown of sleaze and silicon, fetid steam, and perpetual rain. — Richard Corliss

I've been a political junkie for a long time. I find the way Washington works is just fascinating to me. — Tony Goldwyn

The creature you find in Speak, Memory is rare enough to be zoo-worthy. He's not just smarter but somehow more effete than most of us without seeming put on. Resenting him for it would be like resenting a gazelle for her grace. He doesn't sound prissy painting himself as a cultivated synesthete who can hear colors and see music, nor vain talking as a polyglot who translates his own work back and forth into many languages. He's just your standard virtuoso aristocrat from a gilded age. Which is the miracle of his talent. He has shaped the book to highlight his own magnificent way of viewing the world, a viewpoint that so eats your head that you never really leave his very oddly bejeweled skull, and you value things in the book's context as he does, never missing what you otherwise adore in another kind of writer. — Mary Karr

I would like to be a polyglot. — Rachel Maddow

The CIO needs to be an enterprise 'polyglot,' to master both business language and IT terminology, and beyond. — Pearl Zhu

Teddy was reminded of Paterson, but that polyglot population had appeared healthier, more hopeful, the American mood more fertile then in its promises, and the streets of Silk City with their little yards holding a fuchsia bush or a blue-robed plaster statue of the Virgin more livable than these stacked, stinking, ill-lit dens. He had been a part of the population then, a schoolboy immersed in its details of competition and expectation and childish collusion and hierarchy, alive in its struggle and too absorbed to judge or pity, whereas now he came upon it from outside, from above, as an agent of power and ownership, an enforcer and avenger, the representative of the system which squeezed the lowly by the same iron laws whereby it generation profits for the lucky and strong. — John Updike

We will not find security for ourselves if we are estranged from the other people of this world and alienated from them and their cultures. We will not find peace for ourselves and our children by continuing to ignore other people and by arrogantly insisting that the rest of the world must learn from us what we are willing to teach and must speak to us only in our tongue. — Sol M. Linowitz

An important distinction needs to be made in politics between allowing your values to guide you and keeping religion and government separate. Liberals are rightly concerned about government-established and government-supported religion, especially in our religiously polyglot society. But their unwillingness to engage on policy at the level of transcendent and timeless values, for fear of something too moralistic or religious, yields too much ground to the radical political right, which has come to claim Christianity in particular to advance a deeply non-Christian agenda. Theirs is a faith based on intolerance, a faith without compassion. Hating homosexuals and despising immigrants instead of hating poverty and despising homelessness seems to miss the point of a life of faithfulness. — Deval Patrick

The captain swore polyglot -very polyglot- polyglot with bloom and blood. — Bram Stoker

I've gone to China, bought a manufacturing company and moved it to America. Now China wants to buy back some of that new technology from me. That's a great story for America. — Terry McAuliffe

It was once said that this is the land of the free. There is, I believe, a statue out there in the harbor, with something written on it about "Give me your hungry ... your oppressed ... give me pretty much everybody"-that's the way I remember it, anyway. The idea of America is a mutt-culture, isn't it? Who the hell is America if not everybody else? We are-and should be-a big, messy, anarchistic polyglot of dialects and accents and different skin tones ... We need more Latinos to come here. And they should, whenever possible, impregnate our women. — Anthony Bourdain

Were they like Star Trek's Star-Base 9, polyglot, — Stephen Oppenheimer

I think we have to reflect on a treaty change that would permit more than surveillance,
with recommendations and appropriate sanctions. When recommendations are not followed and sanctions prove ineffective, European institutions should have the capacity to impose the necessary decisions on a particular country. — Jean-Claude Trichet

A complicated structure? Undoubtedly. But after all, the cathedral of Milan is complicated too, and you still look at it with awe. — Kato Lomb

Today, whether we are doing algebra or playing with the computer, we are, in effect, benefitting from some inheritance of the quest for a perfect language.
For a Polyglot Federation — Umberto Eco

Menaced by environmental problems, torn by struggles between the tiny coterie of wealthy Spaniards at the center and a teeming, fractious polyglot periphery, battered by a corrupt and inept civic and religious establishment, troubled by a past that it barely understood - to the contemporary eye, sixteenth- and seventeenth-century Mexico City looks oddly familiar. In its dystopic way, it was an amazingly contemporary place, unlike any other then on the planet. It was the first twenty-first-century city, the first of today's modern, globalized megalopolises. — Charles C. Mann

America stands unique in the world: the only country not founded on race but on a way, an ideal. Not in spite of but because of our polyglot background, we have had all the strength in the world. That is the American way. — Ronald Reagan

The polyglot is a linguistic nomad. — Rosi Braidotti

If you compare the written prayers from the psalms, the Lord's Prayer, or those we find in the prayer books of the church, one thing will immediately strike any reader: The prayers from those sources are theologically rich and aesthetically appropriate. I cannot always say this of the spontaneous prayers of many Christians - and I am not impugning their motives or questioning their hearts. — Scot McKnight

The mind of the polyglot is a very particular thing, and scientists are only beginning to look closely at how acquiring a second language influences learning, behavior and the very structure of the brain itself. — Jeffrey Kluger

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

The comparison might strike you as farfetched. What (you might be asking) can a Broadway musical possibly add to the legacy of a Founding Father--a giant of our national life, a war hero, a scholar, a statesman? What's one little play, or even one very big play, next to all that?
But there is more than one way to change the world . To secure their freedom, the polyglot American colonists had to come together, and stick together, in the face of enormous adversity. To live in a new way, they first had to think and feel in a new way. It took guns and ships to win the American Revolution, but it also required pamphlets and speeches--and at least one play. — Jeremy McCarter

It made sense to Abdul that in a polyglot city, people would sort themselves as he sorted his garbage, like with like. — Katherine Boo

It makes sense to me that the polyglot wouldn't know what language he dreamed in. — James Arthur

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

Beautiful people blossomed forth from out of the polyglot, people who really had a lot to them, only it had been smothered by all the eternal social games that had been set up. Suddenly they found each other. — Tom Wolfe

Knowledge enlightens. — Eric Jerome Dickey