Language and Thought Quotes

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

Was it really so far-fetched to think that words had a way of shaping a person's whole life?

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

It is often said that experiments should be made without preconceived ideas. That is impossible. Not only would it make every experiment fruitless, but even if we wished to do so, it could not be done. Every man has his own conception of the world, and this he cannot so easily lay aside. We must, example, use language, and our language is necessarily steeped in preconceived ideas. Only they are unconscious preconceived ideas, which are a thousand times the most dangerous of all.

Experience teaches us that thought does not express itself in words, but rather realizes itself in them

We see only what we have names for.

And to imagine a language means to imagine a form of life.

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

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

Ideas do not exist separately from language.

Thought flies and words go on foot.

Man does not speak because he thinks; he thinks because he speaks. Or rather, speaking is no different than thinking: to speak is to think.

It is extremely natural for us to desire to see such our thoughts put into the dress of words, without which indeed we can scarce have a clear and distinct idea of them our selves.

Language is generated by the intellect and generates the intellect.

A man who has a language consequently possesses the world expressed and implied by that language.

Language is the mother, not the handmaiden, of thought; words will tell you things you never thought or felt before.

It is probably impossible to think without words, but if we permit ourselves to think with the wrong words, we shall soon be entertaining erroneous thoughts; for words, which are given us for the expression of thought, have a habit of going beyond their proper bounds and determining the content of thought.

I don't think there is such a thing as an idea without words, because your language is your thought.

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

Thought and speech are inseparable from each other. Matter and expression are parts of one; style is a thinking out into language.

I love language. It doesn't bother me that its effects are partial. To me that is very sanity-producing. It would be weird if the effects of language were more than partial, if your whole life existed within your texts. That would be much scarier to me than language being an inadequate tool to represent.

The meanings of words are not in the words, they are in us.

Language is the picture and counterpart of thought.

Language is the net that holds thought trapped within a particular culture. But if one could only strike the ball with sufficient force, with perfect timing, it would perhaps break through the netting, continue on its course, never fall to earth, but go into orbit around the world.