James Lovelock Quotes

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

Metaphors are much more tenacious than facts.

There is no aspect of our experience not molded in some way by metaphor's almost imperceptible touch.

Metaphor creates a kind of conceptual synesthesia, in which we understand one concept in the context of another.

Though analogy is often misleading, it is the least misleading thing we have.

Language is memory and metaphor.

When I can't talk sense, I talk metaphor.

Look at almost any passage, and you'll find that a paragraph has five or six metaphors in it. It's not that the speaker is trying to be poetic, it's just that that's the way language works.

There are few things as toxic as a bad metaphor. You can't think without metaphors.

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

We use metaphors to express our own truths.

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

Philosophy [nature] is written in that great book which ever is before our eyes -- I mean the universe -- but we cannot understand it if we do not first learn the language and grasp the symbols in which it is written. The book is written in mathematical language, and the symbols are triangles, circles and other geometrical figures, without whose help it is impossible to comprehend a single word of it; without which one wanders in vain through a dark labyrinth.

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

I think that metaphor really is a key to explaining thought and language. The human mind comes equipped with an ability to penetrate the cladding of sensory appearance and discern the abstract construction underneath - not always on demand, and not infallibly, but often enough and insightfully enough to shape the human condition. Our powers of analogy allow us to apply ancient neural structures to newfound subject matter, to discover hidden laws and systems in nature, and not least, to amplify the expressive power of language itself.

One's capacity for metaphor is one's capacity for a full life.

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.

A metaphor is not an ornament. It is an organ of perception. Through metaphors, we see the world as one thing or another.

In all aspects of life... we define our reality in terms of metaphors and then proceed to act on the basis of the metaphors. We draw inferences, set goals, make commitments, and execute plans, all on the basis of how we in part structure our experience, consciously and unconsciously, by means of metaphor.

The essence of metaphor is understanding and experiencing one kind of thing in terms of another.

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.

Language is the picture and counterpart of thought.

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

In the world of physics we watch a shadowgraph performance of the drama of familiar life. The shadow of my elbow rests on the shadow table as the shadow ink flows over the shadow paper. It is all symbolic, and as a symbol the physicist leaves it. ... The frank realisation that physical science is concerned with a world of shadows is one of the most significant of recent advances.