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

— Karl Kraus

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

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 the mother of thought, not its handmaiden." by Karl Kraus?

Karl Kraus94

Czech playwright and publicist 1874–1936

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

“Light, with its handmaiden color, was everywhere.”

Tad Williams (1957) novelist

Source: Memory, Sorrow, and Thorn, The Dragonbone Chair (1988), Chapter 37, “Jiriki’s Hunt” (p. 629).

“Anxiety is the handmaiden of creativity”

T.S. Eliot (1888–1965) 20th century English author

“Anxiety is the handmaiden of contemporary ambition.”

Alain de Botton book Status Anxiety

Source: Status Anxiety

“Language is not a handmaiden to perception; it is perception; it gives shape to what would otherwise be inert and dead. The shaping power of language cannot be avoided. We cannot choose to distance ourselves from it. We can only choose to employ it in one way rather than another.”

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

“When Poetry thus keeps its place as the handmaiden of piety, it shall attain not a poor perishable wreath, but a crown that fadeth not away.”

John Wesley (1703–1791) Christian theologian

From the Preface to A Collection of Hymns for the Use of the People called Methodists, (c 1779)
General sources

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

George Orwell book 1984

"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.

“The translator translates a book for the ones who are not familiar with its language of origin. If someone can read it in the language of origin, he will not need to read its translation. So, when you translate, you first suppose that you translate it for someone who does not know its language and could not explore that world and that thought.”

Media Kashigar (1956–2017) Iranian translator, writer and poet

Source: The best critic of a translation is its second translation, Center for the Great Islamic Encyclopedia, 2013 https://www.cgie.org.ir/fa/news/3001

“Language can be compared to a sheet of paper: thought is its recto and sound its verso: one cannot cut the verso without simultaneously cutting the recto.”

Ferdinand de Saussure book Course in General Linguistics

Similarly, in the matter of language, one can separate neither sound from thought nor thought from sound; such separation could be achieved only by abstraction, which would lead either to pure psychology, or to pure phonology.
Source: Cours de linguistique générale (1916), p. 157; as cited in: Schaff (1962:11)

“The creative scientist lives in a 'wildness of logic,' where reason is the handmaiden and not the master.”

Marston Morse (1892–1977) American mathematician

Attributed in Princeton & Mathematics: A Notable Record, Chaplin, Virginia, Princeton Alumni Weekly, May 9, 1958 http://www.princeton.edu/~mudd/finding_aids/mathoral/pmcxpaw.htm,

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

Help us to complete the source, original and additional information

Karl Kraus94

Related quotes

Related topics