Top 100 English Is Quotes
#1. You know what English is? The result of the efforts of Norman men-at-arms to make dates with Saxon barmaids.
H. Beam Piper
#2. 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
#3. English is taking over the world. I just wrote a piece about it. And it's not by design. The United States dominates because it's the biggest market.
Norman Spinrad
#4. Words began to appear in English and to make some kind of equivalent. For what satisfaction it is hard to say, except that something seems unusually piercing, living, handsome, in another language, and since English is yours, you wish it to be there too.
Robert Fitzgerald
#5. I'm keen on making English language movies. English is still the global language and we can't change that.
Bruno Zheng Wu
#6. English is the result of Norman men-at-arms attempting to pick up Saxon barmaids and is no more legitimate than any of the other results.
H. Beam Piper
#7. The air of the English is down-to-earth. They care about details; there's a tradition, but there's also a counter-culture: the younger generation versus the older generation and so on. But then that's well blended into a happy balance and crystallised into common sense.
Tadashi Yanai
#8. One of the drawbacks of English is you can't spell things by hearing them.
Bill Nye
#9. If when we are taught English we are just taught the rules of grammar, it would take all our love of our language away from us. What makes us love a subject like English is when we learn all these fantastic stories. Feeding the imagination is what makes a subject come alive.
Daniel Tammet
#11. I don't care how someone lives or how good their spoken English is. I do all of my interviews on Skype text chat - all that matters is their work.
Matt Mullenweg
#12. It's always a unique challenge when you're working with somebody where English is their second language.
Ethan Hawke
#13. One of the biggest problems is - you know, I've got some Hispanic friends - is that a lot of those folks that don't know English, is primarily because they don't even know Spanish. They don't even know their own language.
Bobby Schilling
#14. English is weak in describing emotional states or intensities of interpersonal relationships.
Rita Mae Brown
#15. Ebonics - or black English, as I prefer to call it - is one of a great many dialects of English. And so English comes in a great many varieties, and black English is one of them.
John McWhorter
#16. 'Refudiate,' 'misunderestimate,' 'wee-wee'd up.' English is a living language. Shakespeare liked to coin new words too. Got to celebrate it!'
Sarah Palin
#17. I've sometimes thought ... that the difference between us and the English is that the Scotch are hard in all other respects but soft with women, and the English are hard with women but soft in all other respects.
James M. Barrie
#18. American English is the greatest influence of English everywhere.
Robert Burchfield
#19. Any place where they got to vote on whether English is the official language don't belong in the United States.
Patricia Cornwell
#20. If you actually look at the etymology of the word 'hallucination', what it's come to mean in English is a delusion. But what it really means in the original language is to wander in the mind. That's the meaning of 'hallucination', to wander in the mind.
Terence McKenna
#21. The most stirring battle-poem in English is about a brigade of cavalry which charged in the wrong direction.
George Orwell
#23. I have a handicap in that English is not my first language. So even though I'm a writer, I don't write anymore because it's just harder in English.
Patricia Riggen
#24. Realistically, English is a universal language; it's the number one language for music and for communicating with the rest of the world.
Enrique Iglesias
#25. Teaching English is an intrinsically radical act. Is it possible to teach English so that people stop killing each other?
Mary Rose O'Reilley
#26. As languages go, English is pretty user friendly. If you look at a tiny language spoken somewhere that most of us have never heard of, chances are it's going to be so complicated that you have a hard time imagining how people can walk around speaking it without having a stroke.
John McWhorter
#27. But to understand English is one thing; to understand an Englishman who talks is another.
Aleister Crowley
#28. I said it in Hebrew - I said it in Dutch - I said it in German and Greek; But I wholly forgot (and it vexes me much) That English is what you speak!
Lewis Carroll
#29. It is said that God notes each sparrow that falls. And so He does. But the proper closest statement of it that can be made in English is that God cannot avoid noting the sparrow because the Sparrow is God. And when a cat stalks a sparrow both of them are God, carrying out God's thoughts.
Robert A. Heinlein
#30. We have a president for whom English is a second language. He's like 'We have to get rid of dictators,' but he's pretty much one himself.
Robin Williams
#31. English is not the primary language for universities in China, Korea, and Japan, but they are being evaluated on the basis of publications in English and courses taught in English.
Henry Rosovsky
#32. My English is not very good-looking.
Celia Cruz
#33. As Eskimo language is to snow, so archaic English is to 'metal objects designed to cause harm'.
Austin Grossman
#34. Because English is the universal language. No matter where you come from, if you sing in English, you can cross over to the world.
Lara Fabian
#35. English is my second language. Laughter is my first.
Paul Krassner
#36. Writing in English is like throwing mud at a wall.
Joseph Conrad
#37. Gore speaks to America as if English is its second language; George W. speaks as if English is his second language.
Adam Clymer
#38. I read the Bible to myself; I'll take any translation, any edition, and read it aloud, just to hear the language, hear the rhythm, and remind myself how beautiful English is.
Maya Angelou
#39. I speak French, and I grew up with French, so my English is Franglais.
Corneille Ewango
#40. Tea to the English is really a picnic indoors.
Alice Walker
#41. American English is essentially English after having been wiped off with a dirty sponge.
J.R.R. Tolkien
#42. 'Good English' is whatever educated people talk; so that what is good in one place or time would not be so in another.
C.S. Lewis
#43. It's odd, and a little unsettling, to reflect upon the fact that English is the only major language in which "I" is capitalized; in many other languages "You" is capitalized and the "i" is lower case."
Sydney J. Harris
#44. English is becoming a universal language such as humans have never had before.
Minae Mizumura
#45. I beg your pardon: correct English is the slang of prigs who write history and essays. And the strongest slang of all is the slang of poets.
George Eliot
#47. I think they've got 250 languages in Nigeria, and so English is a sort of lingua franca between the 250 languages.
William Golding
#48. My English is perfect. I just like to say garbled nonsense to throw people off and keep them from bothering me. Cryptic is cool and it just adds to my mystique. I mean, Cancellara says some wacky stuff in English and nobody makes fun of him.
Peter Sagan
#49. Ang Lee was educated in the West and his English is good.
Zhang Yimou
#50. I believe it is our values and our ideals that ultimately bind us together as a nation. But it is the English language which serves as the means by which we can communicate these values to those around us. Our common language, English, is that which unites us.
Asa Hutchinson
#51. Speaking English is like tongue-twist for me. I can speak each word perfect, but then you have to string them together like, 'Blah, blah, blah.' That's when I get crazy.
Jackie Chan
#52. The fight against bad English is not frivolous.
George Orwell
#53. Expressing emotion is not so easy. He has to remind himself that English is not her first language. Expressing emotion can be difficult even when the words are familiar.
Elise Valmorbida
#54. He slowly turned around. "What is love? In English." I raised my brows. "Love, in English, is love?" "What is it in Spanish?" I was so enthralled by his hypnotic eyes, I could barely remember. "Amore?" He shook his head ever so slightly. "No. Love in Spanish is you.
Karina Halle
#55. English is my language because of the history, and what I try to do - and I did that in 'Carpentaria' in particular - is to write in the way we tell stories and in the voice of our own people and our own way of speaking.
Alexis Wright
#56. A genial and cultured Arab, Ameen Rihani, whose English is perfect and whose eloquence is astounding. He will discuss with equal eagerness and knowledge the merits of Picasso or Van Gogh, or the Zionist question, or the British achievements in Arabia.
Kenneth Williams
#57. English is not merely a language anymore; it has become a way of life for millions of non-native English speakers around the world.
M.F. Moonzajer
#58. In India the odd thing is that English is this almost artificial language floating on the surface of a place with about fifty other languages. The same is true of Nigeria but even more so.
William Golding
#59. It was always said that the big distinction between the French and the English is that the English are intelligent and the French are intellectual.
Kenneth Baker
#60. About time, what I really learned from studying English is: time is different with timing.
I understand the difference of these two words so well. I understand falling in love with the right person in the wrong timing could be the greatest sadness in a person's entire life.
Xiaolu Guo
#61. English is necessary as at present original works of science are in English. I believe that in two decades times original works of science will start coming out in our languages. Then we can move over like the Japanese.
A. P. J. Abdul Kalam
#62. Tea to the English is really picnic indoors. Plenty of sandwiches and cookies and of course hot tea. We all used the same cups and plates. (Walker 2000: 116)
Alice Walker
#63. Somebody said to me that I speak English almost like somebody for whom English is not their first language.
Christopher Walken
#64. The second-sweetest set of three words in English is 'I don't know.'
Carol Tavris
#65. When I came here, I couldn't speak a word of English, but my sex life was perfect. Now my English is perfect but my sex life is rubbish
Julio Iglesias
#66. I am a part of the old school where I feel that purity of the language should be retained. But English is a constantly evolving language where new words are being added to the dictionary, so I don't see any harm in experimenting with the language. Only poor editing standards need to be improved.
Ashwin Sanghi
#67. Simple English is no one's mother tongue. It has to be worked for.
Jacques Barzun
#68.
Still, not to be English is hardly regarded as a fatal deficiency even by the English, though grave enough to warrant sympathy.
Beryl Markham
#69. The businessman turns out to have a lot of zanshin. Translating this concept into English is like translating "fuckface" into Nipponese, but it might translate into "emotional intensity" in football lingo.
Neal Stephenson
#70. English is a really wonderful language and I urge you all to investigate it
Werner Herzog
#71. English is capable of defining sentiments that the human nervous system is quite incapable of experiencing.
Robert A. Heinlein
#72. I always loved English because whatever human beings are, we are storytellers. It is our stories that give a light to the future. When I went to college I became a history major because history is such a wonderful story of who we think we are. English is much more a story of who we really are.
Nikki Giovanni
#73. The language we share is at the core of our identity as citizens, and our ticket to full participation in American political life. We can speak any language we want at the dinner table, but English is the language of public discourse, or the marketplace and of the voting booth.
S.I. Hayakawa
#74. My English is a mixture between Arnold Schwarzenegger and Archbishop Tutu.
Billy Wilder
#75. Many people are intimidated by doctors ... People also feel stupid when they don't understand what a doctor's talking about the first time around, so they don't ask again. And let's be honest here, people. English is not a doctor's first language.
Erma Bombeck
#76. Evidently an A level in English is a sacred trust, like something out of "The Lord of the Rings". You must go forth with your A level and protect the English language with your bow of elfin gold.
Lynne Truss
#77. English is such a deliciously complex and undisciplined language, we can bend, fuse, distort words to all our purposes. We give old words new meanings, and we borrow new words from any language that intrudes into our intellectual environment.
Willard Gaylin
#78. To be born English is to win first prize in the lottery of life.
Cecil Rhodes
#80. One of my goals as a professor of English is to teach students to recognize and think critically about what makes something art.
Andrew Hoberek
#81. English is no problem for me because I am actually English. My whole family are English; I was brought up listening to various forms of the English accent.
Guy Pearce
#82. Black English is simpler than standard English in some ways; for example, it often gets by with just 'be' and drops 'am,' 'is,' and 'are.' That's because black English arose when adult African slaves learned the language.
John McWhorter
#83. him to shoot anyone who even looked cross-eyed at him. "Web English is such a subtle tongue," he said. "That phrase is older than the Web," I said. "Just do it.
Dan Simmons
#84. Apparently Arnold was inspired by President Bush, who proved you can be a successful politician in this country even if English is your second language.
Conan O'Brien
#85. Stop your bitching, Nick. You should try being an immortal demon who's lived since the dawn of time having to sit through this crap when English is not my native tongue, and if you think you're fluent in it, buddy, I actually know what a gerund is.
Sherrilyn Kenyon
#86. English is like a poetic extension of myself. It holds my creativity and imagination in blissful and inspiring captivity. Though I consider myself not a prisoner, but rather a valued guest of honor.
Storm Princeholm
#87. A smattering of English is worse than useless; it is an unnecessary tax on our women.
Mahatma Gandhi
#88. Within the black community, roughly 60 percent of children are born to single moms. Moms don't have the emotional wherewithal to deal with their children. Their English is atrocious. Their speaking is atrocious. The dropout rate is horrendous.
Walter Dean Myers
#89. English is the 'language of liberty' for nations emerging from years of cultural oppression.
Vaclav Havel
#90. The American mind, unlike the English, is not formed by books, but, as Carl Sandburg once said to me ... by newspapers and the Bible.
Van Wyck Brooks
#91. in the writing of good English is indispensable to any learned man who expects to make his learning count for what it ought to count in the effect on his fellow men.
Theodore Roosevelt
#92. English is really free for me; there's no limits to the music and the imagination. And French, it's just I live in Paris, and it's really a poetic language where you can really play with words.
Yael Naim
#93. The British are absolutely hung up on class, and whenever they start to really - class for the English is like sex for Americans: They start to shake all over when the subject comes up.
Gore Vidal
#94. I was shy when I was a kid, I was very shy, but now I think I've improved a lot. I can speak OK with the media and with the people. My English is still bad but I feel a little bit better now than before.
Rafael Nadal
#95. Everyone knows English is my second language and my vocabulary is not as broad as it is in Spanish, and because of this, sometimes I use the wrong words to express myself.
Juan Pablo Galavis
#96. To be fair, English is full of booby traps for the unwary foreigner. Any language where the unassuming word fly signifies an annoying insect, a means of travel, and a critical part of a gentleman's apparel is clearly asking to be mangled.
Bill Bryson
#97. It doesn't matter what the income level of your family is, or if English is the first or second language. It makes no difference. The bottom line is that every child can be an academic champion, an academic champion and a superstar in academics.
Arnold Schwarzenegger
#98. English is the language of a people ho have probably earned their reputation for perfidy and hypocrisy because their language itself is so flexible, so often light-headed with with statements which appear to mean one thing one year and quite a different thing the next.
Paul Scott
#99. 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
#100. German and Spanish are accessible to foreigners: English is not accessible even to Englishmen.
George Bernard Shaw
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