Steven Pinker Quotes

Science always uses metaphor.

Metaphor is not just the detection of patterns; it is the creation of patterns.

Key metaphors help determine what and how we perceive and how we think about our perceptions.

Metaphors are much more tenacious than facts.

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

What is remembered is not a deed in stone but a metaphor. Meta = above. Pheren = to carry. That which is carried above the literalness of life. A way of thinking that avoids the problems of gravity. The word won't let me down. The single word that can release me from all that unuttered weight.

The world is emblematic. Parts of speech are metaphors, because the whole of nature is a metaphor of the human mind.

You need language for thought, and you need language to anticipate death. There is no abstract thought without language and no anticipation. I think the anticipation of death without language would be impossible.

Metaphor lives a secret life all around us. We utter about six metaphors a minute. Metaphorical thinking is essential to how we understand ourselves and others, how we communicate and learn, discover and invent.

Aristotle says that metaphor causes the mind to experience itself in the act of making a mistake.

Man can no more think without words than see without light.

If you will give the matter a moment's thought, you'll see that memory is the highest faculty of the human mind.

Metaphors are fine if they aid understanding, but sometimes they get in the way.

The human mind can be sexy.

Metaphors are our way of losing ourselves in semblances or treading water in a sea of seeming.

I don't think of any sentence as a "one-liner", but I do pay attention to how people actually speak when they are being funny. Rhythm is key.

By an object, I mean anything that we can think, i.e. anything we can talk about.

We think in language. We think in words. Language is the landscape of thought.

Real thinking is possible only in the light of genuine language, no matter how limited, how primitive.

Moreover, metaphor is typically viewed as characteristic of language alone, a matter of words rather than thought or action. For this reason, most people think they can get along perfectly well without metaphor. We have found, on the contrary, that 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.

The brains -the thinking organs- are the world producers -nature's genitals.

What do you think of the human mind? I mean, in case you think there is a human mind.

Poetry is as vital to thinking as knowledge.

I love the human mind.

A simile is just a metaphor with the scaffolding still up.