Lee Whorf Quotes & Sayings

How torturous is the "churchly" language one must speak in church - the tone, style, habit. It is all artificial; there is a total absence of a simple human language. With what a sigh of relief one leaves this world of cassocks, and kissing and church gossip. As soon as one leaves, one sees: wet bare branches, fog which floats over fields, trees, homes. Sky. Early dusk. And it all tells an incredibly simple truth. — Alexander Schmemann

I find endless sustenance in the creative. I freely drink from the fountain of knowledge. I'm forever the student - considered the teacher. — Truth Devour

Speech is the best show a man puts on. — Benjamin Lee Whorf

A fair realization of the incredible degree of the diversity of linguistic system that ranges over the globe leaves one with an inescapable feeling that the human spirit is inconceivably old; that the few thousand years of history covered by our written records are no more than the thickness of a pencil mark on the scale that measures our past experience on this planet; that the events of these recent millenniums spell nothing in any evolutionary wise, that the race has taken no sudden spurt, achieved no commanding synthesis during recent millenniums, but has only played a little with a few of the linguistic formulations and views of nature bequeathed from an inexpressibly longer past. — Benjamin Lee Whorf

The world that is coming toward us out of time is going to be very much richer in a mental sense because (among other freedoms) we are going to get a modicum of freedom from linguistic frameworks, from familiar mental habits. Anyone who really knows two or more tongues realizes that even that small enlargement of liberty ... gives him new perspectives, exercizes his soul anew. — Benjamin Lee Whorf

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 in this way - an agreement that holds through our speech community and is codified in the patterns of our language. — Benjamin Lee Whorf

Courage is the spear of destiny. — Matshona Dhliwayo

The very natural tendency to use terms derived from traditional grammar like verb, noun, adjective, passive voice, in describing languages outside of Indo-European is fraught with grave possibilities of misunderstanding. — Benjamin Lee Whorf

Language shapes the way we think, and determines what we can think about. — Benjamin Lee Whorf

They say that not matter how old you become, when you are with your siblings, you revert back to childhood. — Karen White

A change in language can transform our appreciation of the cosmos. — Benjamin Lee Whorf

We live - on a spinning planet in a world of spin. — Christopher Buckley

When I was picked to fly the X-1, it was my duty to fly it, and I did. — Chuck Yeager