Linguistic Relativity Quotes

'When I use a word,' Humpty Dumpty said in rather a scornful tone, 'it means just what I choose it to mean - neither more nor less.'

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

Truth is a property of sentences, since sentences are dependent for their existence upon vocabularies, and since vocabularies are made by human beings, so are truths.

Language tethers us to the world; without it we spin like atoms.

A language is the appearances of connections therefore language as in writing doesn't express anything: it creates.

Words are a strange thing. You once saw an animal and decided it's a 'cat.' But cat is a sound. This cat has nothing to do with the animal. But I have decided it's a cat. So a cat it is.

It is hard indeed to notice anything for which the languages available to us have no description.

All language is but a poor translation.

Nothing exists except through language.

The closer the look one takes at a word, the greater distance from which it looks back.

The words of language, as they are written or spoken, do not seem to play any role in my mechanism of thought. The physical entities which seem to serve as elements in thought are certain signs and more or less clear images.

He who does not know foreign languages does not know anything about his own.

I don't know of any wrong road to Dictionopolis, so if this road goes to Dictionopolis at all it must be the right road, and if it doesn't it must be the right road to somewhere else, because there are no wrong roads to anywhere. Do you think it will rain?

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

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

We never choose which words to use, for as long as they mean what they mean to mean, we don’t care if they make sense or nonsense.

Because we are in the world, we are condemned to meaning, and we cannot do or say anything without its acquiring a name in history.

We don't realize how much we create reality through language. If we say that life is hard, it will be hard.

I am convinced that words are things, and we simply don't have the machinery to measure what they are. I believe that words are tangible things.

Without language, thought is a vague, uncharted nebula.

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

No two languages are ever sufficiently similar to be considered as representing the same social reality.

We see only what we have names for.

Language is very powerful. Language does not just describe reality. Language creates the reality it describes.

Just learning to think in another language allows you to see your own culture in a better viewpoint.