Writings on Philosophy and Language Quotes

“Poetry is the mother tongue of the human race, as the garden is older than the ploughed field; painting, than writing; song, than declamation; parables, than logical deduction; barter, than commerce. A deeper sleep was the repose of our most distant ancestors, and their movement was a frenzied dance. Seven days they would sit in the silence of thought or wonder; -- and would open their mouths -- to winged sentences.”
― Johann Georg Hamann, Writings on Philosophy and Language

“From the orators were made talkers; from historians, polyhistors; from philosophers, sophists; from poets, wits.”
― Johann Georg Hamann, Writings on Philosophy and Language

“The purity of a language dispossesses it of its wealth; a correctness that is all too rigid takes away its strengh and manhood. In a city as big as Paris, forty learned men are procured each year, at no expense, who infalliably know what is pure and polite in their mother tongue and what is neccessary for the monopoly of this junkshop.”
― Johann Georg Hamann, Writings on Philosophy and Language

“Whoever writes in a foreign language must like a lover accommodate his mode of thinking to it. -- Whoever writes in his native language has the authority of a husband in his own house, if he is in command of it.”
― Johann Georg Hamann, Writings on Philosophy and Language

“The most miraculous researchers into language are also, from time to time, the most impotent exegetes; -- the strongest lawgivers are the destroyers of their tables, or they will become one-eyed through the fault of their children.”
― Johann Georg Hamann, Writings on Philosophy and Language

“(About the reason why scholars hold inclination towards Arabic as a heresy): [...] one must not accept the customs of a people whose language one loves, nor cover up small coups d'état with the gold plate of language, nor dupe young people and Maecenases into believing that one can fence as soon as one knows how to parry and thrust and hold the épée and body.”
― Johann Georg Hamann, Writings on Philosophy and Language

“A reader who seeks after truth might become a hypochondriac out of dread.”
― Johann Georg Hamann, Writings on Philosophy and Language

“We are not lacking in ovservation by which the relation of language to its variable usage can be determined rather precisely. Insight into this relation and the art of applying it belongs to the spirit of the law and the secrete of governing. It is just this relation which makes classical writers. The trouble caused by confounding languages and the blind fatih in certain signs and formulas are at times coup d'état which have them in the kingdong of truth than the most powerful, freshly exhumed word-radical or the unending geealogy of a concept; coup d'état which would never enter the head of a scholarly blatherer and an eloquent journeyman, not even in his most propitious dreams.”
― Johann Georg Hamann, Writings on Philosophy and Language