Hubert Reeves (1984) Atoms of silence: an exploration of cosmic evolution Massachusetts Institute of Technology. p. 37
“Words bend our thinking to infinite paths of self-delusion, and the fact that we spend most of our mental lives in brain mansions built of words means that we lack the objectivity necessary to see the terrible distortion of reality which language brings.”
Source: Hyperion (1989), Chapter 3 (p. 191)
Help us to complete the source, original and additional information
Dan Simmons 104
American novelist 1948Related quotes
Variant: Self-importance is our greatest enemy. Think about it - what weakens us is feeling offended by the deeds and misdeeds of our fellowmen. Our self-importance requires that we spend most of our lives offended by someone.
Source: Fire from Within
2010s, Speech at the Republican National Convention (July 20, 2016)
Discourse no. 12; vol. 2, p. 104.
Discourses on Art
" Rules of Language http://pinker.wjh.harvard.edu/articles/papers/Pinker%20Rules%20of%20Language.pdf," Science (August 2, 1991)
Source: Essai de semantique, 1897, p. 112 ; as cited in: Schaff (1962:16).
Quoted in Philosophy of Science Vol. 37 (1934), p. 157, and in The Truth of Science : Physical Theories and Reality (1997) by Roger Gerhard Newton, p. 176
Context: What is it that we humans depend on? We depend on our words... Our task is to communicate experience and ideas to others. We must strive continually to extend the scope of our description, but in such a way that our messages do not thereby lose their objective or unambiguous character … We are suspended in language in such a way that we cannot say what is up and what is down. The word "reality" is also a word, a word which we must learn to use correctly.