George Santayana on Value of Language
on Wednesday, March 26, 2014George Santayana Money Quotation saying words have value and can be well combined for higher relative value, but not distilled to a single measure. George Santayana said:
“Language is like money, without which specific relative values may well exist and be felt, but cannot be reduced to a common denominator” — George Santayana
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This quote from George Santayana suggests that language serves a crucial social function similar to that of money. The best interpretation is that Santayana believed language, like currency, allows for diverse and intangible concepts, sentiments, goods and services to be assigned standardized symbolic values that make them universally comparable and exchangeable.
Without language as a common medium of expression and communication, ideas, experiences and attributes may still be personally meaningful but cannot be practically translated between individuals, communities and societies.
According to Santayana, language provides a shared set of symbols and definitions that permit abstract relative values to be objectively quantified, negotiated and translated, just as monetary units facilitate trade by giving numerical worth to tangible and intangible assets.
Birthday: December 16, 1863 – Death: September 26, 1952