A Quote by Benjamin Lee Whorf

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

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Crime shapes how we think about the world; it shapes social decisions that we make; it shapes our base of knowledge. But we don't talk about it intelligently.
Language both reflects and shapes society. Culture shapes language and then language shapes culture. Little wonder that the words we use to talk to each other, and about each other, are the most important words in our language: they tell us who I am, they tell us who you are, they tell us who 'they' are.
I actually think we should be trying to be rigorous in our thinking about television and the way it enters our lives and shapes the way so many people think.
One way to think about what psychedelics are is as catalysts for language development. They literally force the evolution of language. You cannot evolve faster than your language because the language defines the culture of meaning. So if there's a way to accelerate the evolution of language then this is real consciousness expansion and it's a permanent thing. The great legacies of the 60's are in attitudes and language. It boils down to doing your own thing, feeling the vibe, ego-trip, blowing your mind.
What we love determines what we seek. What we seek determines what we think and do. What we think and do determines who we are — and who we will become.
Any fact facing us is not as important as our attitude toward it, for that determines our success or failure. The way you think about a fact may defeat you before you ever do anything about it. You are overcome by the fact because you think you are.
What you believe about the future shapes, informs, and determines how you live now.
Americans think cinema is about storytelling; I don't believe that. I think it's a language and everyone has to find their own way of speaking. It's not so much what you say as the way you say it.
That which a man continually thinks about determines his actions in times of opportunity and stress. I will know what you are if you tell me what you think about when you don't have to think.
No, God does not need us to love Him. But oh, how we need to love God! For what we love determines what we seek. What we seek determines what we think and do. What we think and do determines who we are - and who we will become.
The way you think determines the way you feel, and the way you feel determines the way you act.
How we think about the future and the past determines everything about how we think about our situation as human beings.
I don't think there is any scientific evidence about the question of whether we think only in language or not. But introspection indicates pretty clearly that we don't think in language necessarily. We also think in visual images, we think in terms of situations and events, and so on, and many times we can't even express in words what the content of our thinking is. And even if we are able to express it in words, it is a common experience to say something and then to recognize that it is not what we meant, that it is something else.
TV shapes thought as surely as language shapes it.
I always think about myself as a writer; that comes out of being a reader first, and I don't think I kind of got to really playing with language in any formal way probably until I was in my mid-twenties.
So the language of musical harmony is an absolutely extraordinary one. It's a way of navigating one's emotional frameworks, but without the need to put things into words, and I think that, as with many other languages, it doesn't matter how much you know about a language.
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