All JOHANN WOLFGANG VON GOETHE Quotes about “Language”

“He who does not know foreign languages does not know anything about his own.”
“Wer fremde Sprachen nicht kennt, weiss nichts von seiner eigenen.He who is ignorant of foreign languages, knows not his own.”
“Because everyone uses language to talk, everyone thinks he can talk about language.”
“Die Mathematiker sind eine Art Franzosen. Spricht man zu ihnen, so Ã¼bersetzen sie alles in ihre eigene Sprache, und so wird es alsobald etwas ganz anderes. Mathematicians are a kind of Frenchmen. Whenever you say anything or talk to them, they translate it into their own language, and right away it is something completely different.”
“If you don't know foreign languages, you don't know anything about your own.”
“What must the English and French think of the language of our philosophers when we Germans do not understand it ourselves?”
“A man who is ignorant of foreign languages is also ignorant of his own language.”
“All of us, just because we are able to talk, also believe we are able to talk about language.”
“The force of a language does not consist of rejecting what is foreign but of swallowing it.”
“I curse all negative purism that tells me not to use a word from another language that either expresses something that my own language cannot or does that in a more delicate manner.”
“When translating one must proceed up to the intranslatable; only then one becomes aware of the foreign nation and the foreign tongue.”

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