Whorf Quotes & Sayings

God is our name for the last generalization to which we can arrive. — Ralph Waldo Emerson

Civilization is over-rated, but there isn't much else. — Theodore Roethke

Following these discoveries, the Sapir-Whorf hypothesis stated that a culture's language both reflects how people experience their world and affects their actions in it. Would we still feel love if we had no word for it? Of course we would. But what would the world be like if we had no word for marriage? Our words and language shape our hopes and dreams for the future - and our dreams for the future shape how we act today. — Meik Wiking

At the same time, new concepts and abstractions flow into the picture, taking up the task of describing the universe without reference to such time or space - abstractions for which our language lacks adequate terms. — Benjamin Whorf

If everything you say gets laughed at ...
then you become afraid of everyone ...
and are no longer able to speak ...
even knowing all that does is bother everyone ...
Your heart ...
... shuts down ...
And your words die ... — Natsuki Takaya

I don't spend a lot of time in nature. Probably less than most people that live in urban Texas. — Shane Carruth

Work hard for what you want because it won't come to you without a fight. You have to be strong and courageous and know that you can do anything you put your mind to. If somebody puts you down or criticizes you, just keep on believing in yourself and turn it into something positive. — Leah LaBelle

Before I sought truth. Now I seek justice. — Sophie Jordan

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

Let nothing perturb you, nothing frighten you. All things pass. God does not change. Patience achieves everything. — Teresa Of Avila

My analysis was directed toward purely physical conditions, such as defective wiring, presence of lack of air spaces between metal flues and woodwork, etc., and the results were presented in these terms. — Benjamin Whorf

We dissect nature along lines laid down by our native language. — Benjamin Whorf

But in due course it became evident that not only a physical situation qua physics, but the meaning of that situation to people, was sometimes a factor, through the behavior of people, in the start of a fire. — Benjamin Whorf

Whorf, even though he died in 1941, lent us a meme. — Anonymous

Know what you want & what you offer to the one you wish for. Attract what you desire by understanding yourself better than you have ever done so before. — Truth Devour

When people don't understand my work, I don't feel like explaining. — Yoko Ono

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

Language is not simply a reporting device for experience but a defining framework for it. — Benjamin Whorf

Most metaphysical words in Hopi are verbs, not nouns as in European languages. — Benjamin Whorf

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

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

People don't care enough. They don't get worked up enough. They don't get angry enough. They don't get passionate enough. I'd rather somebody hate what I do than be indifferent to it. — Jonathan Safran Foer

Your anger is like a flower. In the beginning you may not understand the nature of your anger, or why it has come up. But if you know how to embrace it with the energy of mindfulness, it will begin to open. You may be sitting, following your breathing, or you may be practicing walking meditation to generate the energy of mindfulness and embrace your anger. After ten or twenty minutes your anger will have to open herself to you, and suddenly, you will see the true nature of your anger. It may have arisen just because of a wrong perception or the lack of skillfulness. — Nhat Hanh

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

Too long has the public mind considered religion to be synonymous with priestcraft. — Benjamin 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

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

Do all the good you can and make as little fuss about it as possible. — Charles Dickens