Benjamin Lee Whorf Quotes
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.
Quotes to Explore
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So many Indian novels, quite unfairly, do not get the prominence they should because they have been written in a language other than English.
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I was that weird eight-year-old who was really interested in Shakespeare and understood it and appreciated the language.
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It is no exaggeration to say that the English Bible is, next to Shakespeare, the greatest work in English literature, and that it will have much more influence than even Shakespeare upon the written and spoken language of the English race.
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I don't believe in sharing my money. If I go out and work my nuts off and make some money, I don't feel that I should have to share it with my community.
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I live in Brooklyn, in Williamsburg, so I just like to wander around. Williamsburg's such a cool little neighborhood community spot.
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It seems Palestinians can't win. The language of peace negotiations has always been predicated on a representation that Palestinians are violent and that is why Israel behaves as it does.
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Coffee is a language in itself.
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The real being of language is that into which we are taken up when we hear it - what is said.
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I loved everything about Spain - the people, the language, and the food!
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When I did 'Grease,' I took good care of myself. I treated it like a job. I approached it very professionally because I wanted to make a good reputation and hopefully continue on in the Broadway community and continue to do shows.
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I went to community college for about a year but I'd started taking music seriously by then so I dropped out.
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I come from not just a household but a country where the finesse of language, well-balanced sentence, structure, syntax, these things are driven into us, and my parents, bless them, are great custodians of the English language.
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I am lucky that the Western world chooses me to play roles in their movies an television, whatever language it may be.
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Any successful black person will have to face suspicion within his or her own community about his or her loyalty to other blacks.
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The object of poetic activity is essentially language: whatever his beliefs and convictions, the poet is more concerned with words than with what these words designate.
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I think with all my books, language has been their subject as much as anything else. Language can elide or displace or sideline whole groups of people. You can't necessarily change the way language is used, but if it becomes something you're conscious of... that gives you a certain power over it.
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Planned Parenthood is a pretty popular organization. Way more popular than Congress! It claims that one in five women have received care from one of its clinics. And this care, despite what abortion opponents say, is excellent and not easily replaceable by 'community health centers.' Texas tried it, and thousands of women went without care.
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Language is the mother of thought, not its handmaiden.
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For a while, I was a flight attendant. I lived in New York, and I was a bartender. I took cooking classes, martial arts classes. I taught a foreign language. I went back to college and studied acting, which I love. I was doing stunt work as well.
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The appearance doesn't matter as much as the content.
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There is only one home to the life of a river-mussel; there is only one home to the life of a tortoise; there is only one shell to the soul of man: there is only one world to the spirit of our race. If that world leaves its course and smashes on boulders of the great void, whose world will give us shelter?
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The consensus of the founders was, we don't want no government: we want limited but effective government.
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One needs the invented, the spontaneous, the impromptu for ritual. Skepticism, that grain of salt, is inappropriate.
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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.
