Bertrand Russell Quotes

Language is the picture and counterpart of thought.

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

We live at the level of our language. Whatever we can articulate we can imagine or understand or explore.

We think only through the medium of words. Languages are true analytical methods. Algebra, which is adapted to its purpose in every species of expression, in the most simple, most exact, and best manner possible, is at the same time a language and an analytical method. The art of reasoning is nothing more than a language well arranged.

Language is the mother of thought, not its handmaiden.

Without language, thought is a vague, uncharted nebula.

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

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.

Language, as symbol, determines much of the nature and quality of our experience.

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

Only where there is language is there world.

Speech is external thought, and thought internal speech.

Expression and thought are inextricably linked: crude language permits only crude thinking.

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

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

A language that doesn't affect the way you think about programming is not worth knowing.

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

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

Words are not brains, you know.

A man who has a language consequently possesses the world expressed and implied by that language.

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.

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

Was it really so far-fetched to think that words had a way of shaping a person's whole life?

Ideas do not exist separately from language.

Language does our thinking for us.