Benjamin Whorf Quotes

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

Language is not simply a reporting device for experience but a defining framework for it.

No two languages are ever sufficiently similar to be considered as representing the same social reality. The worlds in which different societies live are distinct worlds, not merely the same world with different labels attached.

Ideas do not exist separately from language.

In the party of Lincoln and Reagan and much of the donor class, the defense of human life is what they think loses elections. They think we need to spend time on really popular ideas, like cutting your mom's Social Security check.

Nor, in truth, is it of little importance to prevent the suspicion of any difference having arisen between us from being handed down in any way to our posterity; for it is worse than absurd that parties should be found disagreeing on the very principles, after we have been compelled to make our departure from the world.

You don't see something until you have the right metaphor to perceive it.

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

I think about people and events in terms of archetypes a lot.

Of course, there's been a real debate about where to invest and where to cut, and I'm committed to working with members of both parties to cut our deficits and debt. But we can't simply cut our way to prosperity.

Most progressive in the Democratic Party doesn't cut it, you know. If we still can't have a health care system that provides health care as a human right, if we still cannot, you know, ban fracking and fossil fuels and move like our lives depend on it - you know, we say in the next 15 years we need to phase out fossil fuels.

What we take anything to be profoundly affects how we go about describing it, and how we describe something profoundly affects how we go about explaining, accounting for, or understanding what is what we are, in a sense, defining, by our description.

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.

Our concepts structure what we perceive, how we get around in the world and how we relate to other people. Our conceptual system thus plays a central role in defining our everyday realities.

The amount of interaction, the amount of understanding that exists in your generation among people of different races and different creeds and different colors is unprecedented. And by the way, that goes - that cuts across party lines, that cuts across partisan lines.

The word arse is as much god as the word face. It must be so, otherwise you cut off your god at the waist.

Successful argument is a communication between the acknowledged authority of both parties to the argument.

Human thinking depends on metaphor. We understand new and complex things in relation to the things we already know... once you pick a metaphor it will guide your thinking.

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

In desperation I asked Fermi whether he was not impressed by the agreement between our calculated numbers and his measured numbers. He replied, "How many arbitrary parameters did you use for your calculations?" I thought for a moment about our cut-off procedures and said, "Four." He said, "I remember my friend Johnny von Neumann used to say, with four parameters I can fit an elephant, and with five I can make him wiggle his trunk." With that, the conversation was over.

The world is not real for me until it has been pushed through the mesh of language.

It's obvious that a lot of Tea Party members tend to be elderly. You've seen that famous sign, 'Tell the government to keep its hands off my Medicare.' And I think as long as the government does keep its hands off their Medicare, they're fine with talking about low taxes. But once they start to realize that the Republicans really do want to not just cut Medicare, but essentially abolish it, you know, I just think those people are not going to be part of the Tea Party. They're going to be over with Occupy Wall Street.

The nature of language may determine what most people say, but I always speak my own meaning.

We see only what we have names for.

If you want to really sort of quantify the dereliction of the Republican establishment, those two facts are the most important two facts. One, that they didn't even understand the base of their own party, white working class voters who you know what, don't care about tax cuts for the rich, really aren't interested in the things that the elite part of their party want, including immigration reform. And number two, they spent eight months avoiding finding opposition research to use against the guy who was becoming the front-runner in their party that they don't want.