Why language matters

The Importance of Language

“By words we learn thoughts, and by thoughts we learn life.”

Jean Baptiste Girard

Language is how we connect to ourselves, connect to others, and interpret the world.

Learning another language has taught me firsthand that communication is not always easy. Sometimes, when we cannot find the words, we discover just how powerful those words can be.

Language can help us:

  • ThinkShape and develop our ideas
  • ConnectReach people and understand perspectives beyond our own
  • ExpressSay what we mean with clarity and precision
  • CreateUse words to make ideas, experiences and emotions come alive

And sometimes… the right words can turn an idea into something truly beautiful.

This is why learning to use language well is about so much more than simply learning to write.

  • If you talk to a man in a language he understands, that goes to his head. If you talk to him in his language, that goes to his heart.
    Nelson Mandela
  • Words—so innocent and powerless as they are, as standing in a dictionary, how potent for good and evil they become, in the hands of one who knows how to combine them!
    Nathaniel Hawthorne
  • Words are singularly the most powerful force available to humanity… Words have energy and power with the ability to help, to heal, to hinder, to hurt, to harm, to humiliate, and to humble.
    Yehuda Berg
  • If there’s a book that you want to read, but it hasn’t been written yet, then you must write it.
    Toni Morrison
  • The difference between the right word and the almost right word is the difference between lightning and a lightning bug.
    Mark Twain
  • Words can be like X-rays if you use them properly — they’ll go through anything. You read and you’re pierced.
    Aldous HuxleyBrave New World
  • Thoughts do more than anything else to make things happen.
    L. Frank BaumThe Wonderful Wizard of Oz
  • Raise your words, not your voice. It is rain that grows flowers, not thunder.
    Rumi
  • Kind words do not cost much. Yet they accomplish much.
    Blaise Pascal
  • Better than a thousand hollow words, is one word that brings peace.
    Buddha
  • Don’t use words too big for the subject. Don’t say “infinitely” when you mean “very”; otherwise you’ll have no word left when you want to talk about something really infinite.
    C. S. Lewis
  • A single word can brighten the face of another.
    Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
  • Handle them carefully, for words have more power than atom bombs.
    Pearl S. Buck
  • Words have no power to impress the mind without the exquisite horror of their reality.
    Edgar Allan Poe
  • You can make anything by writing.
    C. S. Lewis
  • Start writing, no matter what. The water does not flow until the faucet is turned on.
    Louis L’Amour
  • We use words to hunt for truths we didn’t know we knew.
    Madeleine L’Engle
  • If you want to change the world, pick up your pen and write.
    Martin Luther
  • Ink and paper cannot be standardly replaced by anything, because a handwritten letter is a small piece of yourself you give to someone else.
    Haruki Murakami