“Ownership of thought depends on the thinker not subordinating himself to a ‘ruling thought’. This is particularly difficult, argues Stirner, … for language itself is a network of ‘fixed ideas’. Truths emerge only when language is reworked and possessed individually.”

—  John Carroll

Source: Break-Out from the Crystal Palace (1974), p. 107

Adopted from Wikiquote. Last update June 3, 2021. History

Help us to complete the source, original and additional information

Do you have more details about the quote "Ownership of thought depends on the thinker not subordinating himself to a ‘ruling thought’. This is particularly diffi…" by John Carroll?
John Carroll photo
John Carroll 58
Australian professor and author 1944

Related quotes

Adolf Hitler photo

“The English language lacks the ability to express thoughts that surpass the order of concrete things. It’s because the German language has this ability that Germany is the country of thinkers.”

Adolf Hitler (1889–1945) Führer and Reich Chancellor of Germany, Leader of the Nazi Party

Source: 7 March 1942, quoted in Hitler's Table Talk, 1941–1944

George Orwell photo

“But if thought corrupts language, language can also corrupt thought.”

"Politics and the English Language" (1946)
Source: 1984
Context: But if thought corrupts language, language can also corrupt thought. A bad usage can spread by tradition and imitation even among people who should and do know better.
Context: All issues are political issues, and politics itself is a mass of lies, evasions, folly, hatred, and schizophrenia. When the general atmosphere is bad, language must suffer. I should expect to find — this is a guess which I have not sufficient knowledge to verify — that the German, Russian and Italian languages have all deteriorated in the last ten or fifteen years, as a result of dictatorship.
But if thought corrupts language, language can also corrupt thought. A bad usage can spread by tradition and imitation even among people who should and do know better.

Bertrand Russell photo
Ferdinand de Saussure photo

“The characteristic role of language with respect to thought is not to create a material phonic means for expressing ideas but to serve as a link between thought and sound,”

Source: Cours de linguistique générale (1916), p. 112
Context: The characteristic role of language with respect to thought is not to create a material phonic means for expressing ideas but to serve as a link between thought and sound, under conditions that of necessity bring about the reciprocal delimitations of units. Thought, chaotic by nature, has to become ordered in the process of its decomposition. Neither are thoughts given material form nor are sounds transformed into mental entities; the somewhat mysterious fact is rather that "thought-sound" implies division, and that language works out its units while taking shape between two shapeless masses. Visualize the air in contact with a sheet of water; if the atmospheric pressure changes, the surface of the water will be broken up into a series of divisions, waves; the waves resemble the union or coupling of thought with phonic substance.

George Boole photo

“That language is an instrument of human reason, and not merely a medium for the expression of thought, is a truth generally admitted.”

George Boole (1815–1864) English mathematician, philosopher and logician

George Boole, quoted in Kenneth E. Iverson's 1979 Turing Award Lecture
Attributed from posthumous publications

Frank Herbert photo
Ilchi Lee photo

“Our exclusive dependence on rational thought and language has obscured our natural ability to sense the flow of energy.”

Ilchi Lee (1950) South Korean businessman

Source: Brain Wave Vibration: Getting Back Into the Rhythm of a Happy, Healthy Life

Samuel Johnson photo

“Language is the dress of thought.”

Samuel Johnson (1709–1784) English writer

The Life of Cowley
Lives of the English Poets (1779–81)

Related topics