“Language shapes the way we think, and determines what we can think about.”

A change in language can transform our appreciation of the cosmos.

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.

By simply doing the reverse and focusing on why you are lucky and grateful things are not worse, you will strengthen and increase your mind’s positive emotions and make yourself happy and even more likely to feel happy in the future.

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.

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

Anyone who really knows two or more tongues realizes that even that small enlargement of liberty . . . gives him new perspectives, exercizes his soul anew.

Speech is the best show a man puts on.

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.

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

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

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.

It’s easier to stay in shape if you never let yourself get out of shape in the first place.

I saw more than I can tell / And I understood more than I saw.

The strange thing about grinding that might surprise many people is that you can grind things and shape them using materials that are generally somewhat softer than the thing you’re grinding and shaping.

There are very complex shapes which would be the same from close by and far away.

I photographed what the camera was seeing. I interfered very little, and the lens produced anatomical images and shapes which my eyes had never observed.

If you look at a shape like a straight line, what’s remarkable is that if you look at a straight line from close by, from far away, it is the same; it is a straight line.

Everything is roughness, except for the circles. How many circles are there in nature? Very, very few. The straight lines. Very shapes are very, very smooth. But geometry had laid them aside because they were too complicated.

Self-similarity is a dull subject because you are used to very familiar shapes. But that is not the case. Now many shapes which are self-similar again, the same seen from close by and far away, and which are far from being straight or plane or solid.