Jonathan Haidt Quotes

We think not in words but in shadows of words.

Thinking in pictures is, therefore, only a very incomplete form of becoming conscious. In some way, too, it stands nearer to unconscious processes than does thinking in words, and it is unquestionably older than the latter both ontogenetically and phylogenetically.

I don't think there is any scientific evidence about the question of whether we think only in language or not. But introspection indicates pretty clearly that we don't think in language necessarily. We also think in visual images, we think in terms of situations and events, and so on, and many times we can't even express in words what the content of our thinking is. And even if we are able to express it in words, it is a common experience to say something and then to recognize that it is not what we meant, that it is something else.

Metaphor creates a kind of conceptual synesthesia, in which we understand one concept in the context of another.

I have a funny mental framework when I do physics. I create an imaginary audience in my head to explain things to - it is part of the way I think. For me, teaching and explaining, even to my imaginary audience, is part of the process.

Words for mental processes are all derived from physical things.

Metaphor is pervasive in everyday life, not just in language but in thought and action. Our ordinary conceptual system, in terms of which we both think and act, is fundamentally metaphorical in nature.

An idea is a feat of association, and the height of it is a good metaphor.

Thoughts without words… Can that be?

A metaphor is not an ornament. It is an organ of perception. Through metaphors, we see the world as one thing or another.

I think dreams are metaphors. Everything you do in writing is metaphorical. So it seems like the same arena to me.

The drive toward the formation of metaphors is the fundamental human drive, which one cannot for a single instant dispense with in thought , for one would thereby dispense with man himself.

Photography has definitely been my favorite way to remember things. At least for me that’s how my brain processes things, of memories or moments - if I take a picture of it I can remember so many more details. I think it’s about choosing the exact picture in my head that signifies or symbolizes a moment - almost as if you’re using film. It’s almost archaic.

What we take anything to be profoundly affects how we go about describing it, and how we describe something profoundly affects how we go about explaining, accounting for, or understanding what is what we are, in a sense, defining, by our description.

The objective world is the order of nature, thinking or reflection follows the suggestions of sense experience, and words are the servomechanisms of reflection.

People forget that it is the eye which makes the horizon, and the rounding mind's eye which makes this or that man a type or representative of humanity with the name of hero or saint.

I love metaphor. It provides two loaves where there seems to be one. Sometimes it throws in a load of fish.

It'is like a book, I think, this bloomin' world.

Thought is prior to language and consists in the simultaneous presentation to the mind of two different images.

They [Fairy Tales] are talking about real emotions, telling true stories, through the medium of metaphor. People used to understand metaphor better than I think we do now. But these stories are so potent, they refuse to die.

The more we see the more we must be able to imagine, and the more we imagine, the more we must think we see.

We think in language. The quality of our thoughts and ideas can only be as good as the quality of our language.

Look who's calling the cauldron black." "Kettle. It’s a kettle. Get your metaphors right." "That wasn’t a metaphor. It was a, you know..." He stared off into space, blinking. "One of those things that’s symbolic of another thing. But isn’t the same thing. Just like it." "You mean a metaphor?" "No! It’s like a story...like...a proverb! That’s it." "I’m pretty sure that wasn’t a proverb. Maybe it was an analogy." "I don’t think so.

Did you ever think about life as a metaphor for television?

All our thinking is of this nature, a free play with concepts.