James Geary Quotes

For we all of us, grave or light, get our thoughts entangled in metaphors, and act fatally on the strength of them.

Metaphor is embodied in language.

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

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.

Persuasion, indeed, is a kind of force. It consists in showing a person the consequences of his actions. It is, in a word, force applied through the mind.

Each of you possesses the most powerful, dangerous and subversive trait that natural selection has ever devised. It's a piece of neural audio technology for rewiring other people's minds. I'm talking about your language.

Words are, of course, the most powerful drug used by mankind.

There are no civilians in 21st-century warfare because the hottest battlefield is the public mind. The front runs between your ears, between your neighbor’s, between mine. The enemy’s objective (and the enemies are numerous) is to capture our thoughts and convictions. Belief is an immensely potent prize.

. . . all meaning comes from analogies.

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.

That dreams have power only over your own mind. But with money you can have power over the minds of others

The eye obeys exactly the action of the mind.

Most minds are the slaves of external circumstances, and conform to any hand that undertakes to mould them.

Hitler's vast propaganda successes were accomplished with little more than the radio and loudspeaker, and without TV and tape and video recording . . . Today the art of mind control is in the process of becoming a science.

All words, in every language, are metaphors.

Color and bite permeate a language designed to rally many men, to destroy some, and to change the minds of others.

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.

It is by metaphor that language grows.

Words and ideas can change or influence the mind just like music can - yes, like a spell. Regarding the effect of my "spells" I think it varies; my music communicates with some, and I think it has had a positive influence on the minds of those who like it. I hope it helped them see the world from a different perspective.

Metaphor is, as a common feature of linguistic practice, an incidental expediency, a homely administering of first-aid by mother-wit to jams or halts in expression suddenly confronting speakers, with no respectable linguistic solution immediately in sight.

Mind control won't work on those who are really hardheaded. You know… Creatures like you.

[I]f a man bred to the seafaring life, and accustomed to think and talk only of matters relating to navigation, enters into discourse upon any other subject; it is well known, that the language and the notions proper to his own profession are infused into every subject, and all things are measured by the rules of navigation: and if he should take it into his head to philosophize concerning the faculties of the mind, it cannot be doubted, but he would draw his notions from the fabric of the ship, and would find in the mind, sails, masts, rudder, and compass.

He was telling the students about the hypnotic technique of using quotes in a conversation. An idea is more palatable ... if it comes from someone else. The unconscious thinks in terms of content and structure. If you introduce a pattern with the words, 'My friend was telling me,' the critical part of her mind shuts off.

Words are such small things, like confetti in the brain, and yet they are color and clarify everything, they can stain the mind or warp the feelings.

Screw the truth into men's minds.