“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

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

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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

“Languages shape the way we think, or don't.”

Erik Naggum (1965–2009) Norwegian computer programmer

Re: Search & Replace in sequences http://groups.google.com/group/comp.lang.lisp/msg/baafc407b4bd66f5 (Usenet article).
Usenet articles, Miscellaneous

“Where we choose to be, where we choose to be--we have the power to determine that in our lives. We cannot reel time backward or forward, but we can take ourselves to the place that defines our being.”

Sena Jeter Naslund (1942) American writer

Source: Ahab's Wife, or The Star-Gazer

“I would like to make the point that we cannot undo the past but we can learn from it, and we cannot predict the future but we can shape and build it.”

Epeli Ganilau (1951) Fijian politician

Excerpts from a speech to the Fiji Institute of Accountants, 28 April 2005

“We have a real choice: either we choose to shape events or we will be shaped by them. Over many centuries, the people of the United Kingdom have got into the habit of being actors in this world, rather than being acted upon by it.”

Tom Tugendhat (1973) British politician

Speech in the House of Commons, 6 September 2018.

“There is only one thing that can form a bond between men, and that is gratitude…we cannot give someone else greater power over us than we have ourselves.”

Montesquieu (1689–1755) French social commentator and political thinker

No. 104. (Usbek writing to Ibben)
Lettres Persanes (Persian Letters, 1721)

“Every time another tribe becomes extinct and their language dies, another way of life and another way of understanding the world disappears forever. Even if it has been painstakingly studied and recorded, a language without a people to speak it means little. A language can only live if its people live, and if today’s uncontacted tribes are to have a future, we must respect their right to choose their own way of life.”

Stephen Corry (1951) British anthropologist and activist

An indigenous language dies ‘once every two weeks’ http://www.survivalinternational.org/news/3086, Survival International 20 February 2008.

“We cannot avoid moodiness; but we may turn to account, as does the poet, the various dispositions of the mind, or give them form and shape, as the sculptor his marble.”

Ernst, Baron von Feuchtersleben (1806–1849) Austrian psychiatrist, poet and philosopher

The Dietetics of the Soul; Or, True Mental Discipline (1838)

“Everyone is mistaken, everyone lives in illusion. At best, we can admit a scale of fictions, a hierarchy of unrealities, giving preference to one rather than to another; but to choose, no, definitely not that…”

Emil M. Cioran (1911–1995) Romanian philosopher and essayist

Drawn and Quartered (1983)

“The language others speak to us, from childhood, shapes the attitudes and beliefs that ground how we use all our powers of action.”

Jay Lemke (1946) American academic

Source: Textual politics: Discourse and social dynamics, 1995, p. 1

“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.”

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Stanley Fish 18

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