Below are a selection of inspiring (and quite famous) quotes/sayings relating to languages - both from prominent individuals and other world cultures:
"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."
"All speech, written or spoken, is a dead language, until it finds a willing and prepared hearer."
Robert Louis Stevenson
"One language sets you in a corridor for life. Two languages open every door along the way."
"The limits of my language are the limits of my world."
"You can never understand one language until you understand at least two."
"The world is a book and those who do not travel read only one page."
"To have another language is to possess a second soul."
"Those who know nothing of foreign languages know nothing of their own."
Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
"Language is the road map of a culture. It tells you where its people come from and where they are going."
Rita Mae Brown
"Language is the blood of the soul into which thoughts run and out of which they grow."
Oliver Wendell Holmes
“Learning a foreign language not only reveals how other societies think and feel, what they have experienced and value, and how they express
themselves, it also provides a cultural mirror in which we can more clearly see our own society.”
Chancellor Edward Lee Gorsuch
"A different language is a different vision of life."
“If we spoke a different language, we would perceive a somewhat different world.”
“A man who knows two languages is worth two men.”
“You live a new life for every new language you speak. If you know only one language, you live only once.”
“Knowledge of languages is the doorway to wisdom.”
“One who speaks only one language is one person, but one who speaks two languages is two people.”
“Change your language and you change your thoughts.”
“Learning another language is not only learning different words for the same things, but learning another way to think about things.”
“A special kind of beauty exists which is born in language, of language, and for language.”
“Language is not a genetic gift, it is a social gift. Learning a new language is becoming a member of the club - the community of speakers of that language.”
"Language is a city to the building of which every human being brought a stone."
Ralph Waldo Emerson
"The individual's whole experience is built upon the plan of his language."
"One forgets words as one forgets names. One's vocabulary needs constant fertilizing or it will die. "
"In the lives of individuals and societies, language is a factor of greater importance than any other. For the study of language to remain solely the
business of a handful of specialists would be a quite unacceptable state of affairs. "
"There are hundreds of languages in the world, but a smile speaks them all."
"We may have different religions, different languages, different coloured skin, but we all belong to the human race."
"The love of one's country is a splendid thing. But why should love stop at the border?"
"Language exerts hidden power, like the moon on the tides."
Rita Mae Brown
"Learning a foreign language, and the culture that goes with it, is one of the most useful things we can do to broaden the empathy and imaginative sympathy and cultural outlook of children."
"Speaking Spanish and Japanese has opened doors in my career and helped me bridge cultural differences, both in my personal and business life. During my football career I realised quickly what difference language skills can make."
"Languages, for me, are about opening the world up. It gives you another soul, it gives you another person."