George Lakoff Quotes

14 Sourced Quotes

If we are to know ourselves, philosophy needs to maintain an ongoing dialogue with the sciences of mind.

George Lakoff
Our concepts structure what we perceive, how we get around in the world and how we relate to other people. Our conceptual system thus plays a central role in defining our everyday realities.

George Lakoff
For real human beings, the only realism is an embodied realism.

George Lakoff
We categorize as we do because we have the brains and bodies we have and because we interact in the world as we do.

George Lakoff
The essence of metaphor is understanding and experiencing one kind of thing in terms of another.

George Lakoff
One of the reasons that politics lets us down is that we keep comparing it to our ideal narratives, to politics on TV or in the movies, which is tidier and better fits such structures.

George Lakoff
Do we really think that the United States will have the protection of innocent Afghans in mind if it rains terror down on the Afghan infrastructure? We are supposedly fighting them because they immorally killed innocent civilians. That made them evil. If we do the same, are we any less immoral?

George Lakoff
One of the things cognitive science teaches us is that when people define their very identity by a worldview, or a narrative, or a mode of thought, they are unlikely to change-for the simple reason that it is physically part of their brain, and so many other aspects of their brain structure would also have to change; that change is highly unlikely.

George Lakoff
The Democrats had begun to use the basics of framing issues in terms of their own values and principles... Had they continued to argue with unity on the difference between 911 and Iraq, and on the fact that George Bush betrayed our troops and is weakening our country, they might have made it impossible for Bush to once again link Iraq with 911.
Then they lost it. Karl Rove outsmarted the Democrats again. And he used the most basic trick in the book to do it... This time John Kerry stepped in to help Bush, basically supporting the president's position but offering policy-wonk modifications. The message: Bush is basically right, except for some minor twiddles.

George Lakoff
Metaphor is pervasive in everyday life, not just in language but in thought and action. Our ordinary conceptual system, in terms of which we both think and act, is fundamentally metaphorical in nature.

George Lakoff
Science is fundamentally a moral enterprise, following the moral imperative to seek the truth.

George Lakoff
The mind is inherently embodied.
Thought is mostly unconscious.
Abstract concepts are largely metaphorical.

George Lakoff
We know that someone who has channeled his anger into something constructive has not had a cow. How do we know these things?

George Lakoff
For many people, love is a collaborative work of art.

George Lakoff