Top 100 Quotes About To Speak English
#1. You know, even growing up going to school, I had teachers that were against bilingual teaching. I never understood that. My parents always had me speak Spanish first knowing I was going to speak English in school.
Emily Rios
#2. I can't even talk the way these people talk. 'Why you ain't?' 'Where you is?' Everybody knows it's important to speak English except these knuckleheads. You can't be a doctor with that kind of crap coming out of your mouth.
Bill Cosby
#4. After working on 'Europa,' I found it incredibly freeing to speak English in a film, so it kind of sparked an interest in me as an artist to improve my acting.
Daniel Wu
#5. Most Muslim women know it is fear and curiosity that cause people to stare. They know it is ignorance and stereotypes that cause people to suppose that a piece of material covering the hair strips a woman of the ability to speak English, pursue a career, work a remote control.
Randa Abdel-Fattah
#6. Sham marriages have been widespread; people have been allowed to settle in Britain without being able to speak English; and there have not been rules in place to stop migrants becoming a burden on the taxpayer. We are changing all of that.
Theresa May
#7. If somebody's going to earn citizenship, with whatever other hurdles are put in the way, at the end of the road they should be able to speak English, they should be able to read English, they should have some knowledge of American history,
Rudy Giuliani
#8. Shakespeare is absolutely big in Africa. I guess he's big everywhere. Growing up, Shakespeare was the thing. You'd learn monologues and you'd recite them. And just like hip-hop, it made you feel like you knew how to speak English really well. You had a mastery of the English language to some extent.
Ishmael Beah
#9. Dejardins was so stunned, he momentarily forgot how to speak English. Ce n'est pas possible. On ne pourrait pas-
Rick Riordan
#10. When I first came to this country, I didn't know how to speak English.
Wilmer Valderrama
#11. I really wanted to speak English because I started touring the world, and I wanted to communicate with people directly.
Miyavi
#12. She'd known I was coming, known what I was after, and she'd only started to speak English after seeing me. She was one of them. The scarred ones.
Samantha Shannon
#13. The French just said he was a damned nuisance. Or they would have had they the good fortune to speak English. Instead being French they were forced to say it in their own language.
Lauren Willig
#14. My mother had an incredibly strong accent - although I couldn't hear it - and she was the main person there, so I'll have learnt to speak English from her.
John Key
#15. Every German child learns to speak English in school.
Cornelia Funke
#16. Children learn to speak Male or Female the way they learn to speak English or French.
Jeffrey Eugenides
#17. A lot of country making films in English, but in Japan we are very shy to speak English.
Hiroyuki Sanada
#18. I have a wonderful English-language dialogue coach. All the time I have to speak English, he is with me. It is a double effort, because you have to say the words correctly and then act them.
Adriana Barraza
#19. Our leaders increasingly see fit to lecture the ethnic minorities on the need to integrate, including of course the need to speak English. What about the need, though, for Britain to integrate with the rest of the world?
Martin Jacques
#20. We can only converse if we can speak the same language. So if we are going to build One Nation, we need to start with everyone in Britain knowing how to speak English.
Ed Miliband
#21. Nothing in my younger life could have told me I would have needed to know how to speak English.
Omar Sy
#22. The East End of Glasgow is like the Olympics. Lots of foriegners in tracksuits struggling to speak English.
Frankie Boyle
#23. Yes, they broke the law, but we can't deport them. Let's get over this pointing fingers and do something about that, whether it - they have to pay a fine, learn to speak English, the history, you can do that. And then you have to give visas for the skills we need.
Michael Bloomberg
#24. It was curious what trying to speak English had done lately to his mind; it reminded him of studying poetry in college, words gaining and losing their meaning, overlapping with images, the curious echo of ideas behind the words people used.
Jess Walter
#25. You only have to look at London, where almost half of all primary school children speak English as a second language, to see the challenges we now face as a country. This isn't fair to anyone: how can people build relationships with their neighbours if they can't even speak the same language?
Theresa May
#26. If you go to France, you have to speakFrench. If you speak in English, no one looks at you. On the one hand we sayEnglish is a global language.
Raj Thackeray
#27. There is a story I always tell my students ... when I came for the 1st time to the US. I didn't speak English (Only Spanish) & I saw on every door the word "exit" which in Spanish means Success = Exito. And then I said :"No wonder Americans are winners ,every door they open leads to success
Pablo
#28. I was raised speaking English and Spanish. And I also speak Danish. And I can get by in French and Italian. I've acted in Spanish and English, but when something has to do with emotions, sometimes I feel I can get to the heart of the matter better in Spanish.
Viggo Mortensen
#29. I was raised to be kind. My parents were underdogs. Immigrant Jews. I spoke with an accent. I didn't speak English even - I spoke French and Yiddish mostly. I was picked on.
Saul Rubinek
#30. Dag insists that all dogs secretly speak the English language and subscribe to the morals and beliefs of the Unitarian church ...
Douglas Coupland
#32. It's funny because I'm so used to acting in English that any time I have these moments where I have to speak Russian, it definitely takes a different part of my brain to pull it off, but it's always nice and fun.
Ksenia Solo
#33. English is only a weak second language, so that the third language
which at the moment is getting the most play, since French is what I speak, read, and hear almost 24/7
is trying to take over the no. 2 spot.
Apol Lejano-Massebieau
#34. I speak as your native guide to the mysterious tribe called the English. Dress code is everything. You can be a card-carrying Nazi, you can pay gigolos to eat gnocchi out of your navel and you won't be pilloried
as long as you never, ever wear linen with tweed.
Kathy Lette
#35. There is always that age-old thing about England and America being divided by a common language. You think that because we speak English and you speak English that you're bound to understand and like everything that we do. And of course you don't.
Rowan Atkinson
#36. It took me a year to really learn the American lingo. I really feel for people who are coming here and don't speak English at all. It must be hell.
Helen Reddy
#37. Dad!' I'd complain when I lost track of what he was saying. 'Speak English.'
'Megyn, I will not lower my vocabulary to meet yours,' he said. 'You must raise yours to meet mine.
Megyn Kelly
#38. I live in a small country in Europe - Finland - and I don't speak English well and I had nothing to do with publishing houses in the West. I lived in complete isolation.
Hassan Blasim
#39. Back home, almost everything I did, I did in Hebrew. I went to drama school in Hebrew, my whole career was in Hebrew, and to switch languages was something that was fascinating and more complicated than I expected it to be, even though I've been speaking English since I could speak.
Yael Grobglas
#40. I really believe amendment " to make English our common and unifying language" is racist. I think it's directed basically to people who speak Spanish.
Ruben Aguilar
#41. I speak English. I grew up speaking Bengali. This is the normal, the known, the obvious composition of who I am. Then there's Italian, this strange, other component of me that I've just created. It was a creative process just to learn the language, never mind to start expressing myself in it.
Jhumpa Lahiri
#42. You'll hear people say it's racist to test. Folks, it's racist not to test. Because guess who gets shuffled through the system oftentimes? Children whose parents don't speak English as a first language, inner-city kids. It's so much easier to quit on somebody than to remediate.
George W. Bush
#43. I came to New York when I was 21, 22. I couldn't speak English. I knew I wanted to go to fashion school.
Francisco Costa
#44. I'm used to shifting languages because my father used to speak to us, to my brother and I, he used to speak in English. He wanted us to be quite fluent in English, especially when he was trying to correct our behavior; he would do that in English.
J.M.G. Le Clezio
#45. Is it O.K. that I speak in English? The only thing I know in Dutch is how to order pot.
Eddie Vedder
#46. When you sing in English and Spanish, it's two completely different forms of expression and ... even the people who don't speak Spanish love to hear me sing in Spanish.
Gloria Estefan
#47. What happened? Did a house fall on your sister?" I asked. Maybe there was a benefit to our language barrier. She pursed her lips.
"You can't stay here much longer," she said.
My mouth dropped open.
"You ... you speak English?"
She snorted. "Of course.
Richelle Mead
#48. Should such an ignorant people lead the world? How did it come to this in the first place? 82 percent of us don't even have a passport! Just a handful can speak a language other than English.
Michael Moore
#49. The people who run the major banks have MBAs and wear suits. And when those people in suits come to the homes of people who don't have a high school diploma, don't even speak English, and offer them a home at zero percent down, that doesn't make a hell of a lot of sense.
Ramin Bahrani
#50. Sometimes, when he wanted to hide or not outright lie, he chose to speak in English. He used to break into it when he argued with my mother, and it drove her crazy when he did and she would just plead, "No, no!" as though he had suddenly introduced a switchblade into a clean fistfight.
Chang-rae Lee
#51. More than 300 million people in the world speak English and the rest, it sometimes seems, try to.
Bill Bryson
#52. I am an English major in school with an emphasis in creative writing. I think hearing Maya Angelou speak at school last year was one of the best moments Stanford, at least, intellectually, had to offer.
Fred Savage
#53. Difficult for actors to extemporise in nineteenth-century English. Except for Robert Hardy and Elizabeth Spriggs, who speak that way anyway.
Emma Thompson
#54. It's hard for me to speak, whether in English or Afrikaans. The reason I write is because I cannot speak. I feel blunt.
Antjie Krog
#55. In school in Lebanon, we were not allowed to speak Arabic during breaks - it had to be French or English.
Rabih Alameddine
#56. I have never been particularly good with languages. Despite a dozen years of Hebrew school and a lifetime of praying in the language, I'm ashamed to admit that I still can't read an Israeli newspaper. Besides English, the only language I speak with any degree of fluency is Spanish.
Joshua Foer
#59. I'm quite discreet. I think I'd rather focus on my work. So, I only speak when I have something to say. 'Live hidden, and live happy.' Is that the same in English as it is in French?
Delphine Arnault
#60. It is always a taut moment in a foreign country waiting to see if your English-speaking guide speaks English ...
Peg Bracken
#61. When I was old enough, I was 21 years of age, I decided to come to America. I did it illegally, so I jumped the border. I didn't speak any English.
Cesar Millan
#62. If you can speak English, and you can get a place on a proper course at a proper university, you can come to study in Britain.
Theresa May
#63. I hope God speaks English. If I get up to heaven and have to point at a menu, I'm gonna be pissed.
Daniel Tosh
#64. My father is Cuban. Spanish was my first language, but I don't speak it that much anymore because I had dyslexia, and in school they work with you only in English. But I'm proud to be Latina, and most people don't know I am.
Bella Thorne
#65. I started doing shows in places that I couldn't pronounce, didn't know existed, and I've seen people that didn't speak English or Spanish rapping to every lyric and singing to every hook. I said, "This is the type of music that I want to do."
Pitbull
#66. Your English style will no doubt put all the other gentlemen to bed. I speak figuratively, of course.
John Gielgud
#67. President Bush appeared with Arnold Schwarzenegger at a huge campaign event. Only in California can a governor who speaks German and a president who can barely speak English try to make themselves clear to an audience that's primarily Spanish.
Jay Leno
#68. I first went to Barcelona in 1975 after university, and I stayed for three years. I learnt Catalan because that's what everyone speaks in the mountains. They speak English to foreigners, but what people say to each other is much more important than what they say to you.
Colm Toibin
#69. The more English is heard in the world, the more gratifying it seems to speak French, and above all to know the culture of our country. They find a kind of French social grace in the language and culture.
Bernard Pivot
#70. I sometimes feel nervous because I give stupid answers to certain pointless questions. It happens in Turkish as much as in English. I speak bad Turkish and utter stupid sentences.
Orhan Pamuk
#71. Englishmen did not speak to strangers on trains ...
Ken Follett
#72. When Jerry Lewis and I were big, we used to go to parties, and everybody thought I was big-headed and stuck up, and I wasn't. It was because I didn't know how to speak good English, so I used to keep my mouth shut.
Dean Martin
#73. We have made a conscious effort to blend in with U.S. society and have done our best to develop good English skills. Today, both Johanna and I communicate in English with ease, and our children speak English at native fluency levels, but we continue to speak Icelandic at home.
Gudjon Bergmann
#74. My opinion is that more languages you speak, better it is, but when you come to America, you speak English.
Melania Trump
#75. I don't speak English, so I'll just have to win the trust and confidence of the fans with my performance on the field.
Masahiro Tanaka
#76. When I was living in Paris in the '80s, I used to go out with an American model who couldn't speak French. But suddenly everyone could speak English because he was so cute.
Edmund White
#77. Dogs can't speak English. Nor any human language - save, in one notable exception, Luxembourgish, which is only comprehensible to bankers and Luxembourgers, and therefore hardly of any use at all. No, you've eaten something disagreeable and are having a nightmare, that's all.
Ransom Riggs
#78. I had a very tough childhood. I came here from Italy in the '70s and didn't speak a word of English, so the kids at school tormented me. Truly, it was horrifying the names they called me, and the teachers never really did a thing to stop it.
Giada De Laurentiis
#79. In our generation, everybody told us that it's really important and it's nice to be able to speak a lot of languages. It's an art, too. It really impresses me, people who speak, like, seven languages. I admire them so much, so I began with English, and then Spanish and maybe Portuguese.
Adele Exarchopoulos
#80. I love the English people - if you don't want to speak, you don't speak. And I'm quite like that sometimes.
Sophie Cookson
#81. I have no idea what it would be like to be just one thing and speak one language. I feel enormously privileged to travel and be able to mingle and speak to people that, had I only known English, I wouldn't have been able to meet.
Cary Fukunaga
#82. There even are places where English completely disappears. In America, they haven't used it for years! Why can't the English teach their children how to speak?
Alan Jay Lerner
#83. I love English, though I now call it 'Anglo- American' because we no longer speak British English due to globalization and America's economic power.
Maurice Druon
#84. I could speak to you and say, 'Laytay-chai, paisey, paisey.' ... Why aren't you responding? Oh, you don't speak Swahili. Well, I've got news for you. The dog doesn't speak English, or American, or Spanish, or French.
Ian Dunbar
#85. So you don't speak English, you have no ID, you can't tell where you're from ... that's suspicion, it's lower than probable cause. And then we have a right to call immigration and check you out.
Joe Arpaio
#86. There are 3 basic differences between we British and you Americans. One, we speak English, and you don't. Two, when we have a "World Championship", we invite teams from other nations. Three, when you meet the British head of State, you only have to get down on one knee.
John Cleese
#87. I couldn't speak English. I'm in kindergarten, and the only reason I got through to first grade is because I cheated.
Louis Zamperini
#88. She blinked at me, then realized I was panicking. Honestly, it was like admitting to murder before being interrogated.
"Ms. Davidson," she began, but I decided to trip her up, to throw her off the trail of blood I'd left like an injured animal.
"I don't speak English.
Darynda Jones
#89. You have already achieved the English-Language poet's most important goal: you can read, Write and speak English well enough to understand this sentence.
Stephen Fry
#90. One of the reasons the English got through all their falls and the loss of their empire, all their disasters, their strikes, their difficulties, their wars through the years was they had Shakespeare to fall back on. And they speak well in England.
Norman Mailer
#91. Well, I'm trilingual myself. I am, I know how to speak Spanish, English, obviously, and I speak pretty good Ebonics.
Cam Newton
#92. Mind you, the Elizabethans had so many words for the female genitals that it is quite hard to speak a sentence of modern English without inadvertently mentioning at least three of them.
Terry Pratchett
#93. I have no problem living in Liverpool, but I think my wife and daughters deserve to enjoy every day to the full and live their lives - but they have to be at home all day. My wife doesn't speak a word of English, so she depends 100% on me. I live here with them. That's my world, that's my life.
Javier Mascherano
#94. I listen a lot to how people speak. I've read a great many good books in my life. I had some excellent English teachers. Surely, those things were helpful.
Anthony Bourdain
#95. I went back to China and did a movie in Mandarin, and I don't speak Mandarin, so I learned it phonetically. Now, when I'm on set and somebody gives me English lines, I'm like, "Are you kidding? What's happening? This is amazing!"
Maggie Q
#96. The British capitalize on their accent when they don't want you to know what they're saying. But if you wake them up at 4 A.M., they speak perfect English, the same as we do.
Henry A. Kissinger
#97. They don't talk the same language as us. I don't mean that they don't speak English, but that their minds are different. They're like animals, and because I hate the sight and sound of them, and because you're a Britisher, I'm telling you to get out now while the going's good.
Eric Ambler
#98. Hey, any idea why Australians speak something that sounds deceptively like English but isn't? I mean, I'm trying to figure out why I can't seem to converse with another human being who speaks the same language as I do.
Elle Lothlorien
#99. This made no sense to me, probably because I speak English and have never had a head injury.
Tina Fey
#100. I must make a choice every time I speak a sentence in English. I try to choose the happier way of saying things, so that my own words will not weigh me down like stones.
Tad Williams
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