John von Neumann Quotes

Language was a huge expansion of that capacity to deal with information.

The spoken word was the first technology by which man was able to let go of his environment in order to grasp it in a new way.

Mathematics is pure language - the language of science. It is unique among languages in its ability to provide precise expression for every thought or concept that can be formulated in its terms.

Without words to objectify and categorize our sensations and place them in relation to one another, we cannot evolve a tradition of what is real in the world.

It is hard to know what you are talking about in mathematics, yet no one questions the validity of what you say. There is no other realm of discourse half so queer.

Nearly all institutions, it might be said, are based on signs, but these signs do not directly evoke things.

Language is not only the vehicle of thought, it is a great and efficient instrument in thinking.

Language is memory and metaphor.

Language comes first. It's not that language grows out of consciousness, if you haven't got language, you can't be conscious.

Many people suggest using mathematics to talk to the aliens, and Dutch computer scientist Alexander Ollongren has developed an entire language (Lincos) based on this idea. But my personal opinion is that mathematics may be a hard way to describe ideas like love or democracy.

As soon as there is language, generality has entered the scene.

Language is the most extraordinary invention in the history of humanity, the one which came before everything and which makes it possible to share everything.

Reading or written language is a cultural invention that necessitated totally new connections among structures in the human brain underlying language, perception, cognition, and, over time, our emotions.

Without language, thought is a vague, uncharted nebula.

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.

Words are not brains, you know.

Being that can be understood is language.

Arithmetic has a very great and elevating effect, compelling the soul to reason about abstract number, and rebelling against the introduction of visible or tngible objects into the argument.

Mathematics is a language plus reasoning. It's like a language plus logic. Mathematics is a tool for reasoning.

External reality is sort of an affectation of the nervous system.

Being a language, mathematics may be used not only to inform but also, among other things, to seduce.

No one for a moment can pretend that printing is so great a discovery as writing, or algebra as a language.

We can only know in the nervous system what we have known in behavior first.

Mathematics may be a way of developing physically, that is anatomically, new connections in the brain.

Mathematics is not just a language. Mathematics is a language plus reasoning.