Madeleine L'Engle Quotes

A man with a scant vocabulary will almost certainly be a weak thinker. The richer and more copious one's vocabulary and the greater one's awareness of fine distinctions and subtle nuances of meaning, the more fertile and precise is likely to be one's thinking. Knowledge of things and knowledge of the words for them grow together. If you do not know the words, you can hardly know the thing.

We think in language. We think in words. Language is the landscape of thought.

Language is generated by the intellect and generates the intellect.

Language serves not only to express thought but to make possible thoughts which could not exist without it.

The constructions of language, which is to say the constructions of thought, are formed within experience, not the other way around.

A man without words is a man without thought.

Not only the entire ability to think rests on language... but language is also the crux of the misunderstanding of reason with itself.

Language is the mother of thought, not its handmaiden.

Man can no more think without words than see without light.

Language is the picture and counterpart of thought.

You need language for thought, and you need language to anticipate death. There is no abstract thought without language and no anticipation. I think the anticipation of death without language would be impossible.

If I don't have words, it's a sign I'm not reading enough.

Much has been written about the life of the mind.

Key metaphors help determine what and how we perceive and how we think about our perceptions.

Man does not speak because he thinks; he thinks because he speaks. Or rather, speaking is no different than thinking: to speak is to think.

When you use words, you're able to keep your mind alive. Writing is my way of reaffirming my own existence.

Consciousness allows you the capacity to plan.

Some languages expand not only your ability to speak to different people but what you're able to think.

Many studies have established the fact that there is a high correlation between vocabulary and intelligence and that the ability to increase one's vocabulary throughout life is a sure reflection of intellectual progress.

Language is the mother, not the handmaiden, of thought; words will tell you things you never thought or felt before.

Preston, I don't think this creature could ever find its way into your head. Quite apart from anything else, it seems pretty crowded and complicated to me.

Thinking has to be learned in the way dancing has to be learned.

Without language, thought is a vague, uncharted nebula.

Real thinking is possible only in the light of genuine language, no matter how limited, how primitive.

Was there a little time between the invention of language and the coming of true and false?