« All Language Quotes · Benjamin Lee Whorf's Page
Language Quotes by Benjamin Lee Whorf
- Language shapes the way we think, and determines what we can think about.
- Language is not simply a reporting device for experience but a defining framework for it.
- We cut nature up, organize it into concepts, and ascribe significances as we do, largely because we are parties to an agreement to organize it…
- A change in language can transform our appreciation of the cosmos.
- Language is not simply a reporting device for experience but a defining framework for it. So if, from perhaps some unhealthy desire for sympathetic support,…
- Most metaphysical words in Hopi are verbs, not nouns as in European languages.
- We dissect nature along lines laid down by our native language.
More Language Quotes
- Only the mob and the elite can be attracted by the momentum of totalitarianism itself. The masses have to be won by… — Hannah Arendt
- High thoughts must have high language. — Aristophanes
- In making a speech one must study three points: first, the means of producing persuasion; second, the language; third the proper arrangement… — Aristotle
- But I liked Yeats! That wild Irishman. I really loved his love of language, his flow. His chaotic ideas seemed to me… — Chinua Achebe
- War is what happens when language fails. — Margaret Atwood
- As soon as you have a language that has a past tense and a future tense you're going to say, 'Where did… — Margaret Atwood
- A poet is, before anything else, a person who is passionately in love with language. — Wystan Hugh Auden
- A poem records emotions and moods that lie beyond normal language, that can only be patched together and hinted at metaphorically. — Diane Ackerman
- The finest command of language is often shown by saying nothing. — Roger Babson
- A special kind of beauty exists which is born in language, of language, and for language. — Gaston Bachelard
- In any area of the U.N. we... have to agree on certain language that can represent the same spirit, but that can… — Michelle Bachelet
- An inability to stay quiet is one of the conspicuous failings of mankind. — Walter Bagehot