George Lakoff Quotes

Even the simple act that we call "going to visit a person of our acquaintance" is in part an intellectual act. We fill the physical appearance of the person we see with all the notions we have about him, and in the totality of our impressions about him, these notions play the most important role.

People do not think in English or Chinese or Apache; they think in a language of thought. This language of thought probably looks a bit like all these languagesBut compared with any given language, mentalese must be richer in some ways and simpler in others.

The schematicism by which our understanding deals with the phenomenal world ... is a skill so deeply hidden in the human soul that we shall hardly guess the secret trick that Nature here employs.

I believe in general in a dualism between facts and the ideas of those facts in human heads.

We dissect nature along lines laid down by our native language.

I have never experienced another human being. I have experienced my impressions of them.

Growing up, I always loved working with people. I love playing with people and having that moment of discovering something different. I believe in the magic of what music is.

. . . all meaning comes from analogies.

I chop and change between what is called 'work' and what is called 'recreation.' There are no discontinuities in my day. I only play tennis with people I find interesting.

When people get together that come from different musical backgrounds, a lot of times there's is a good ... it's very enjoyable to say somebody, let me turn you on to some things, and the other person does the same thing. And they play you stuff that maybe you weren't that familiar with and likewise.

You can be walking down the street for a chat, but until you've got the selfie out of the way, people aren't ready to talk.

When you're talking to a person, it only matters what they are perceiving. You only need them to perceive you as a loving husband. You don't necessarily need to be one. That's always a good road, if you actually are one. But what people are perceiving will dictate what their life is, and ultimately what your interaction is.

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.

Reality exists in the human mind, and nowhere else.

Is it a form of social play that underneath the words people say, there is a different conversation going on?

Few people have definitely articulated philosophies of their own. But almost everyone has his own peculiar sense of a certain total character in the universe, and of the inadequacy of fully to match it [to] the peculiar systems that he knows.

Many species reciprocate, but only humans gossip, and much of what we gossip about is the vale of other people as partners for reciprocal relationships.

Just as we tend to assume that the world is as we see it, we naively suppose that people are as we imagine them to be.

I find people confusing.

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

There are people who in spite of their merit disgust us and others who please us in spite of their faults.

The reality of any place is what its people remember of it.

People assume that they perceive reality as it is, that our senses accurately record the outside world. Yet the science suggests that, in important ways, people experience reality not as it is, but as they expect it to be.

What people think, believe, and feel affects how they behave. The natural and extrinsic effects of their actions, in turn, partly determine their thought patterns and affective reactions.

It's easier to be creative if you've got other people to play with.