“Language is not a handmaiden to perception; it is perception; it gives shape to what would otherwise be inert and dead.”

— Stanley Fish

Source: How To Write A Sentence And How To Read One (2011), Chapter 4, What Is A Good Sentence?, p. 42

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 "Language is not a handmaiden to perception; it is perception; it gives shape to what would otherwise be inert and dead." by Stanley Fish?

Stanley Fish 18

American academic 1938

Stanley Fish (1938) American academic

Source: How To Write A Sentence And How To Read One (2011), Chapter 4, What Is A Good Sentence?, p. 42

“Typography tended to alter language from a means of perception and exploration to a portable commodity.”

Marshall McLuhan (1911–1980) Canadian educator, philosopher, and scholar-- a professor of English literature, a literary critic, and a …

Source: 1960s, The Gutenberg Galaxy (1962), p. 183

“All of the new media have enriched our perceptions of language and older media. They are to the man-made environment what species are to biology.”

Marshall McLuhan (1911–1980) Canadian educator, philosopher, and scholar-- a professor of English literature, a literary critic, and a …

Source: 1960s, Counterblast (1969), p. 84

“A mental image occurs when a representation of the type created during the initial phases of perception is present but the stimulus is not actually being perceived; such representations preserve the perceptible properties of the stimulus and ultimately give rise to the subjective experience of perception.”

Stephen Kosslyn (1948) American psychologist

Source: Image and Mind. 1980, p. 6

“Value perception dominates color perception.”

Jacques Bertin (1918–2010) French geographer and cartographer

Source: Semiology of graphics (1967/83), p. 87

“Language is the mother of thought, not its handmaiden.”

Karl Kraus (1874–1936) Czech playwright and publicist

Half-Truths and One-And-A-Half Truths (1976)

“Language always preserves a play or figure/ground relation between experience, and perception and its replay in expression.”

Marshall McLuhan (1911–1980) Canadian educator, philosopher, and scholar-- a professor of English literature, a literary critic, and a …

Source: 1980s, Laws of Media: The New Science (with Eric McLuhan) (1988), p. 121

“You dull your own perceptions
with false imaginings and do not grasp
what would be clear but for your preconceptions.”

Dante Alighieri book Paradiso

Canto I, lines 88–90 (tr. Ciardi).
The Divine Comedy (c. 1308–1321), Paradiso

“If I were a writer, how I would enjoy being told the novel is dead. How liberating to work in the margins, outside a central perception. You are the ghoul of literature. Lovely.”

Don DeLillo book The Names

Source: The Names (1982), Ch. 4

“Had optical perception not evolved into something more than sensory perception, into super-sensory perception, then the present period would never have had the courage to discover the spiritual in matter. There would have been no fundamental difference between a painting by Picasso [from Picasso's so-called 'abstract' period] and one by Paulus Potter”

Theo van Doesburg (1883–1931) Dutch architect, painter, draughtsman and writer

Dutch painter from the 17th century, famous for his painting of cows
Quote from 'Painting: from composition towards counter-composition'; in 'Painting and plastic art', 'De Stijl' – Theo van Doesburg, series XIII, 1 73-4, 1926, pp. 17–18
1926 – 1931

“Language is not a handmaiden to perception; it is perception; it gives shape to what would otherwise be inert and dead.”

Help us to complete the source, original and additional information

Stanley Fish 18

Related quotes

Related topics