Howard Rheingold Quotes

We see only what we have names for.

There's nothing you can know that isn't known.

Our imagination is stretched to the utmost, not, as in fiction, to imagine things which are not really there, but just to comprehend those things which are there.

What if a tree fell in the forest and no one knew it's biological name? Did it exist?

I think that you really get what you recognize is in the universe.

Language alone protects us from the scariness of things with no names. Language alone is meditation.

They say that nameless things change constantly—that names fix them in place like pins.

Once you gave a thing a name, you gave it life.

If you have it and you know you have it, then you have it. If you have it and don't know you have it, you don't have it. If you don't have it but you think you have it, then you have it.

Time is the element that controls the consciousness, the very being of the people.

Recognition of function always precedes recognition of being.

Our understanding is correlative to our perception.

The great mystery of our consciousness is beyond our grasp.

It's always interesting just to see how the human mind is relating to the natural universe, and what we try to make of it just so we can believe we understand what's going on.

What's in a name? That which we call a rose by any other name would smell as sweet.

What our eyes behold may well be the text of life but one's meditations on the text and the disclosures of these meditations are no less a part of the structure of reality.

Intelligence is quickness in seeing things as they are.

The perception of what a thing is and the perception of what it means are not separate, either.

The more unintelligent a man is, the less mysterious existence seems to him.

There are things known and there are things unknown, and in between are the doors of perception.

We live on the leash of our senses.

Without consciousness, space and time are nothing.

All our knowledge has its origins in our perceptions.

Knowledge goes hand and hand with truth.

Since a thing cannot be known directly or totally, one can only attune to it, with greater or lesser degrees of intimacy.