A language is a dialect with an army and navy

"A language is a dialect with an army and navy", sometimes called the Weinreich witticism, is a mordant aphorism about the arbitrariness of the distinction between a dialect and a language. It was originally said in the context of the "social plight of Yiddish", and has been widely adopted as a shorthand for the importance of social and political conditions, rather than purely linguistic considerations, in defining the status of a language or dialect.

Source: Wikipedia — A language is a dialect with an army and navy (CC BY-SA 4.0)