
Scientific Materialism.
Fragments of Science, Vol. II (1879)
Address, Dedication of Williston Seminary, Dec. 1, 1841.
Scientific Materialism.
Fragments of Science, Vol. II (1879)
“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.
Letter to Thomas Law (13 June 1814)
1810s
Context: Self-interest, or rather self-love, or egoism, has been more plausibly substituted as the basis of morality. But I consider our relations with others as constituting the boundaries of morality. With ourselves, we stand on the ground of identity, not of relation, which last, requiring two subjects, excludes self-love confined to a single one. To ourselves, in strict language, we can owe no duties, obligation requiring also two parties. Self-love, therefore, is no part of morality. Indeed, it is exactly its counterpart.
Source: Outwitting the Devil: The Secret to Freedom and Success
“The logical picture of the facts is the thought.”
3
Original German: Das logische Bild der Tatsachen ist der Gedanke.
1920s, Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus (1922)
“Language is the dress of thought.”
The Life of Cowley
Lives of the English Poets (1779–81)
Source: Radical Monotheism and Western Culture (1960), p. 12
“Different languages, the same thoughts; servant to thoughts and their masters.”
“Hidden Words,” p. 58
The Sun Watches the Sun (1999), Sequence: “A Stone and a Word”