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.

Benjamin Lee Whorf

• Community
• Language
• Agreement

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Quotes to Explore

• So many Indian novels, quite unfairly, do not get the prominence they should because they have been written in a language other than English.

  

  Vikram Seth
  • English
  • Language
  • Novels

• I was that weird eight-year-old who was really interested in Shakespeare and understood it and appreciated the language.

  

  Zendaya
  • Language
  • Weird
  • Appreciated

• Perhaps no other body of literature is as subject to political pressures from within the community as gay fiction.

  

  Edmund White
  • Political
  • Community
  • Body

• 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.

  

  Lafcadio Hearn
  • Work
  • English
  • Language

• 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.

  

  Gary Numan
  • Work
  • Believe
  • Money

• I live in Brooklyn, in Williamsburg, so I just like to wander around. Williamsburg's such a cool little neighborhood community spot.

  

  Zoe Kravitz
  • Live
  • Community
  • Cool

• 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.

  

  Randa Abdel-Fattah
  • Why
  • Peace
  • Language

• Coffee is a language in itself.

  

  Jackie Chan
  • Language
  • Coffee
  • Itself

• When you say that you are a race man, it means that you embrace the entire black community regardless of the hue, whether somebody is very light and could pass for possibly white or someone is very dark.

  

  Ed Smith
  • Man
  • Black
  • Light

• Diabetes occurs at twice the rate in the African American community as it does in white Americans.

  

  Xavier Becerra
  • American
  • Community
  • White

• The real being of language is that into which we are taken up when we hear it - what is said.

  

  Hans-Georg Gadamer
  • Up
  • Real
  • Taken

• Watch how you communicate with a woman. Because you're always communicating, even when you're not talking - with your body language, your facial expressions, your eyes.

  

  Orlando Bloom
  • Eyes
  • Woman
  • Language

• I loved everything about Spain - the people, the language, and the food!

  

  Karlie Kloss
  • People
  • Food
  • Language

• 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.

  

  Laura Osnes
  • Good
  • Job
  • Community

• I went to community college for about a year but I'd started taking music seriously by then so I dropped out.

  

  Caitlin Rose
  • Music
  • Community
  • College

• 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.

  

  Daniel Day-Lewis
  • Great
  • Country
  • Parents

• I am lucky that the Western world chooses me to play roles in their movies an television, whatever language it may be.

  

  Irrfan Khan
  • World
  • Play
  • Language

• Any successful black person will have to face suspicion within his or her own community about his or her loyalty to other blacks.

  

  Randall Kennedy
  • Black
  • Community
  • Loyalty

• 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.

  

  Octavio Paz
  • Words
  • Language
  • Beliefs

• 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.

  

  Kate Grenville
  • People
  • Power
  • Change

• No, I don't belong to a retirement community.

  

  Sally Kellerman
  • Community
  • Retirement

• When I was in South Africa, I went for dinner with some friends, and I knew more about their history than they did - it just hasn't been told.

  

  David Harewood
  • Friends
  • History

• Even when I was modelling, I never had a mom sitting on my head and a bunch of people waiting on me. I've always been independent. I'll do my thing and go.

  

  Malaika Arora Khan
  • People
  • Mom
  • Waiting

• 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
  • Community
  • Language
  • Agreement