"Gaps in political language are rarely innocent. The case of ‘nationalism’ is no exception. By being semantically restricted to small sizes and exotic colours, ‘nationalism’ becomes identified as a problem: it occurs ‘there’ on the periphery, not ‘here’ at the centre. The separatists, the fascists and the guerrillas are the problem of nationalism. The ideological habits by which ‘our’ nations are reproduced as nations, are unnamed and, thereby, unnoticed. The national flag hanging outside a public building in the United States needs no special attention. It belongs to no special, sociological genus. Having no name, it cannot be identified as a problem. No, by implication, is the daily reproduction of the United States a problem."

"To put it another way, one can sleep with anyone, but one can only read some people’s words."

"Bilingual dictionaries made visible an approaching egalitarianism among languages - whatever the political realities outside, within the covers of the Czech-German/German-Czech dictionary the paired languages had a common status."