"Language is the express image and picture of human thoughts [...]" (Thomas Reid, "Essays on the Intellectual Powers of Man", 1785)
"Languages are true analytical methods." (Antoine-Laurent Lavoisier, “Elements of Chemistry”, 1790)
"For language is the armory of the human mind [...]" (Samuel T Coleridge," Biographia Literaria", 1817)
"Language is not only a means of recording the results of our thinking; it is an instrument of thought, and that of the highest value." (Thomas Hill, "The Imagination in Mathematics", The North American Review Vol. 85 (176), 1857)
"Language is a system of interdependent terms in which the value of each term results solely from the simultaneous presence of the others." (Ferdinand de Saussure, "Course in general linguistics", 1915)
"Language is a purely human and non-instinctive method of communicating ideas, emotions and desires by means of a system of voluntarily produced symbols." (Edward Sapir, "Language", 1921)
"Language is the communicative process par excellence in every known society [...]" (Edward Sapir, "Communication", 1931)
"A language is like a map; it is not the territory represented, but it may be a good map or a bad map." (Alfred Korzybski, "Science and Sanity: An Introduction to Non-Aristotelian Systems and General Semantics", 1933)
"We are always looking for metaphors in which to express our ideas of life, for our language is inadequate for all its complexities." (Charles Singer, "A Short History of Scientific Ideas to 1900", 1959)
"All our language is composed of brief little dreams; and the wonderful thing is that we sometimes make of them strangely accurate and marvelously reasonable thoughts." (Paul Valéry, "The Outlook for Intelligence", 1962)
"Every word and every language is a model." (Donella Meadows, "Limits to Growth", 1972)
"[...] language is the medium through which new conceptual metaphors are created." (George Lakoff and Mark Johnson, "Metaphors We Live By", 1980)
"Language is the most formless means of expression." (Ian Wilson, "Conceptual Art", 1984)
"Human language is a vehicle of truth but also of error, deception, and nonsense." (David Ruelle, "The Mathematician's Brain", 2007)
"Language is a tool of social intercourse to such an extent that it is newly reinvented every time it is absent." (Mario Bunge, "Matter and Mind: A Philosophical Inquiry", 2010)
"[...] languages are not really means for representing already known truths, but are rather instruments for discovering previously unrecognised ones." (Wilhelm von Humboldt)
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