58 Great Inspirational Quotes for Language Learners

Learning a new language is a journey full of emotions and experiences, can be challenging and frustrating sometimes, but the good things aren’t always easy to achieve right? So keep an eye on your goal why you started, and keep going, another thing: enjoy the process!

Here are 58 of the best inspirational quotes for language learners to keep you motivated.

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1- “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

2- “Speak a new language so that the world will be a new world.” ― Rumi

3- “Learn everything you can, anytime you can, from anyone you can; there will always come a time when you will be grateful you did.” ― Sarah Caldwell

4- “One language sets you in a corridor for life. Two languages open every door along the way.” ― Frank Smith

5- “One who speaks only one language is one person, but one who speaks two languages is two people.” ― Turkish Proverb

6- “You live a new life for every language you speak. If you know only one language, you live only once.” ― Czech proverb

7- “It is astonishing how much enjoyment one can get out of a language that one understands imperfectly.” ― Basil Lanneau Gildersleeve

8- “The limits of my language mean the limits of my world.” ― Ludwig Wittgenstein

9- “We should learn languages because language is the only thing worth knowing even poorly.” ― Kató Lomb

10- “If I’m selling to you, I speak your language. If I’m buying, Dann müssen Sie Deutsch Sprechen.” ― Willy Brandt

11- “Think like a wise man but communicate in the language of the people.” ― William Butler Yeats

12- “With languages, you are at home anywhere.” ― Edward De Waal

13- “You can never understand one language until you understand at least two.” ― Geoffrey Willans

14- “A different language is a different vision of life.” ― Federico Fellini

15- “Language is the archives of history.” ― Ralph Waldo Emerson

16- “Language is the road map of a culture. It tells you where its people come from and where they are going.” ― Rita Mae Brown

17- “Knowledge of languages is the doorway to wisdom.” ― Roger Bacon

18- “A man who knows two languages is worth two men.” ― French Proverb

19- “He who knows no foreign languages knows nothing of his own.” ― Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

20- “A special kind of beauty exists which is born in language, of language, and for language.” ― Gaston Bachelard

21- “To have another language is to possess a second soul.” ― Charlemagne

22- “Any time you think some other language is strange, remember that yours is just as strange, you’re just used to it.” ― Anonymous

23- “Learning another language is not only learning different words for the same things but learning another way to think about things.” ― Flora Lewis

24- “Language is to the mind more than light is to the eye.” ― William Gibson

25- “The man who does not know other languages, unless he is a man of genius, necessarily has deficiencies in his ideas.” ― Victor Hugo

26- “We invent the world through language. The world occurs through language.” ― Mal Pancoast

27- “No two languages are ever sufficiently similar to be considered as representing the same social reality.” ― Edward Sapir

28- “Do you know what a foreign accent is? It’s a sign of bravery.” ― Amy Chua

29- “To learn a language is to have one more window from which to look at the world.” ― Chinese Proverb

30- “Absolutely nothing is so important for a nation’s culture as its language.” ― Wilhelm von Humboldt

31- “It is literally the case that learning languages make you smarter. The neural networks in the brain strengthen as a result of language learning.” ― Michael Gove

32- “No man should travel until he has learned the language of the country he visits. Otherwise, he voluntarily makes himself a great baby, so helpless and so ridiculous.” ― Ralph Waldo Emerson

33- “Language reflects the soul of people.” ― Paul Schibler

34- “A new language is a new life.” ― Persian proverb

35- “The most intimate temper of a people, its deepest soul, is above all in its language.” ― Jules Michelet

36- “Learn a language, and you’ll avoid a war.” ― Arab proverb

37- “I love commuting between languages just like I love commuting between cultures and cities.” ― Elif Safak

38- “If you want people to understand you, you speak their language.” ― African Proverb

39- “You are as many persons as languages you know.” ― Armenian Proverb

40- “A man can be recognized by his language.” ― Jewish proverb

41- “First, the language dies, then the culture.” ― Anonymous

42- “Who wants to have an effect on others, must first speak in their language with them.” ― Kurt Tucholsky

43- “Study a foreign language if you have an opportunity to do so. You may never be called to a land where that language is spoken, but the study will have given you a better understanding of your own tongue or of another tongue you may be asked to acquire.” ― Gordon B. Hinckley

44- “The joy of knowing a foreign language is inexpressible. I find it really difficult to express such joy in my mother tongue.” ― Munia Khan

45- “I’m always impressed by people who can speak another language, two people talking what sounds like utter gibberish, yet making complete sense to each other never fails to entertain.” ― Tom Reynolds

46- “A man who is ignorant of foreign languages is also ignorant of his own language.” ― Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

47- “Some translators turn an author’s words from gold to stone, others from stone to gold.” ― Terri Guillemets

48- “We have strong evidence today that studying a foreign language has a ripple effect, helping to improve student performance in other subjects.” ― Richard Riley

49- “A mistake is to commit a misunderstanding.” ―Bob Dylan

50- “Learning is a treasure that will follow its owner everywhere.”
Chinese Proverb

51- “Learn a new language and get a new soul.” ―Czech Proverb

52- “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.” ―Frank Smith

53- “Language is the blood of the soul into which thoughts run and out of which they grow.” ―Oliver Wendell Holmes

54- “Change your language and you change your thoughts.” ―Karl Albrecht

55- “It is astonishing how much enjoyment one can get out of a language that one understands imperfectly.” – Basil Gildersleeve

56- “One of the benefits of being bicultural is simply the awareness that how you live is not the only way.” – Ann Campanella

57- “To learn a new language is, therefore, always a sort of spiritual adventure; it is like a journey of discovery in which we find a new world.” – Ernst Cassirer

58- “We learn grammar from language, not language from grammar.” – Kato Lamb

That was our list of the best inspirational quotes for language learners, share your favourite(s) with your friends!

Oualid Cheddadi

Oualid Cheddadi is a language enthusiast who created Lingualid with the mission to inspire independent language learners worldwide, regardless of the language they are learning. The name “Lingualid” is derived from the Portuguese word for “language,” “língua,” and the last three letters of Oualid’s name, “Lid.”

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