Lakoff Theory Quotes & Sayings

Physical pain inspires the worst kind of helplessness. — Hiromi Kawakami

I sat on the piano bench next to my mother in church. Something happened before I set foot on this planet. I was crawling around inside of her. She was a church pianist. My dad was a brilliant singer. I was hearing it. — Al Jarreau

At the highest level, there is the general Subject-Self metaphor, which conceptualizes a person as bifurcated. The exact nature of this bifurcation is specified more precisely one level down, where there are five specific instances of the metaphor. These five special cases of the basic Subject-Self metaphor are grounded in four types of everyday experience: (1) manipulating objects, (2) being located in space, (3) entering into social relations, and (4) empathic projection-conceptually projecting yourself onto someone else, as when a child imitates a parent. The fifth special case comes from the Folk Theory of Essences: Each person is seen as having an Essence that is part of the Subject. The person may have more than one Self, but only one of those Selves is compatible with that Essence. This is called the "real" or "true" Self. — George Lakoff

The change we are looking for is always a change within ourselves. And the change will come. I've noticed that as long as I'm willing to be different, something or someone arrives to show me how. — Marianne Williamson

The Khodorkovsky case is typical of the "oprichnina" - the system of oppression. — Vladimir Sorokin

[P]hilosophical theories are structured by conceptual metaphors that constrain which inferences can be drawn within that philosophical theory. The (typically unconscious) conceptual metaphors that are constitutive of a philosophical theory have the causal effect of constraining how you can reason within that philosophical framework. — George Lakoff

There is much to be said for the cynical liberal response. Much of it is true. Yet it has major flaws and is far from the whole story. First, it is a demonization of conservatives. It assumes that they are either rich, evil, self-serving power-mongers, or their paid agents, or dupes. The conservative ranks may well contain some of each. Yet most conservatives are not rich and see themselves as working for the benefit of the country rather than for their own benefit. There are too many idealistic conservatives of good intentions and moderate means for the demonization theory to be true. Second, — George Lakoff

There is no real person whose embodiment plays no role in meaning, whose meaning is purely objective and defined by the external world, and whose language can fit the external world with no significant role played by mind, brain, or body. Because our conceptual systems grow out of our bodies, meaning is grounded in and through our bodies. Because a vast range of our concepts are metaphorical, meaning is not entirely literal and the classical correspondence theory of truth is false. — George Lakoff

A stranger sleeps next to me, like a stone beside another stone. — Mihail Sebastian

In philosophy, metaphorical pluralism is the norm. Our most important abstract philosophical concepts, including time, causation, morality, and the mind, are all conceptualized by multiple metaphors, sometimes as many as two dozen. What each philosophical theory typically does is to choose one of those metaphors as "right," as the true literal meaning of the concept. One reason there is so much argumentation across philosophical theories is that different philosophers have chosen different metaphors as the "right" one, ignoring or taking as misleading all other commonplace metaphorical structurings of the concept. Philosophers have done this because they assume that a concept must have one and only one logic. But the cognitive reality is that our concepts have multiple metaphorical structurings. — George Lakoff

Metaphysics in philosophy is, of course, supposed to characterize what is real - literally real. The irony is that such a conception of the real depends upon unconscious metaphors. — George Lakoff

In short, philosophical theories are largely the product of the hidden hand of the cognitive unconscious. — George Lakoff