Antoine Lavoisier Quotes

One cannot explain words without making incursions into the sciences themselves, as is evident from dictionaries; and, conversely, one cannot present a science without at the same time defining its terms.

Ideas do not exist separately from language.

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

It is probably impossible to think without words, but if we permit ourselves to think with the wrong words, we shall soon be entertaining erroneous thoughts; for words, which are given us for the expression of thought, have a habit of going beyond their proper bounds and determining the content of thought.

Thinking about language, while thinking _in_ language, leads to puzzles and paradoxes.

Language is the picture and counterpart of thought.

Language serves not only to express thought but to make possible thoughts which could not exist without it.

The constructions of language, which is to say the constructions of thought, are formed within experience, not the other way around.

Man does not exist prior to language, either as a species or as an individual.

Words don't change their shape, they change their meaning, their function...They don't have a meaning of their own any more, they refer to other words that you don't know, that you've never read or heard...you've never seen their shape, but you feel...you suspect...they correspond to...an empty space inside you...or in the universe.

It is not humanly possible to gather immediately from it what the logic of language is. Language disguises thought.

For if consciousness is based on language, then it follows that it is of much more recent origin than has been heretofore supposed. Consciousness come after language! The implications of such a position are extremely serious.

Language is the mother, not the handmaiden, of thought; words will tell you things you never thought or felt before.

The words of language, as they are written or spoken, do not seem to play any role in my mechanism of thought. The physical entities which seem to serve as elements in thought are certain signs and more or less clear images.

Language is generated by the intellect and generates the intellect.

All words, in every language, are metaphors.

Language always preserves a play or figure/ground relation between experience, and perception and its replay in expression.

Language is not a handmaiden to perception; it is perception; it gives shape to what would otherwise be inert and dead.

I hardly ever talk- words seem such a waste, and they are none of them true. No one has yet invented a language from my point of view.

Language helps develp life as surely as it reflects life. It is a most important part of our human condition.

I am convinced that words are things, and we simply don't have the machinery to measure what they are. I believe that words are tangible things.

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

Language always pre-exists us: it is always already 'in place', waiting to assign us our places within it.

Language does our thinking for us.

I love language. It doesn't bother me that its effects are partial. To me that is very sanity-producing. It would be weird if the effects of language were more than partial, if your whole life existed within your texts. That would be much scarier to me than language being an inadequate tool to represent.