David Cronenberg Quotes

We think in language. We think in words. Language is the landscape of thought.

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

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

Real thinking is possible only in the light of genuine language, no matter how limited, how primitive.

We live at the level of our language. Whatever we can articulate we can imagine or understand or explore.

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

Only where there is language is there world.

A man without words is a man without thought.

Man can no more think without words than see without light.

Without language, thought is a vague, uncharted nebula.

Language is generated by the intellect and generates the intellect.

Language, as symbol, determines much of the nature and quality of our experience.

Thinking is different from perceiving and is held to be in part imagination, in part judgment

We think because we have words, not the other way around. The more words we have, the better able we are to think conceptually.

As far as we know, we are the only species on the planet who have been given the gift-or curse, perhaps-of awareness about our own mortality. Everything here eventually dies; we're just the lucky ones who get to think about this fact every day.

Various kinds of self-forgetting, usually accompanied by illusions and myths, make it possible to live without the intransigent facing of death-in the sense of always thinking about it and what it means for life and the things dear in life-which is characteristic of a serious life.

By an object, I mean anything that we can think, i.e. anything we can talk about.

Each time I fail to think about death, I have the impression of cheating, of deceiving someone in me.

I think our children are afraid to die because we're afraid to die.

Thinking about language, while thinking _in_ language, leads to puzzles and paradoxes.

The fact is that if you have not developed language, you simply don't have access to most of human experience, and if you don't have access to experience, then you're not going to be able to think properly.

Every day, have a little bird on your shoulder that asks, 'Is today the day? Am I ready? Am I doing all I need to do? Am I being the person i want to be? Is today the day I die?

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.

Language is the picture and counterpart of thought.

Language always preserves a play or figure/ground relation between experience, and perception and its replay in expression.