Language serves not only to express thought but to make possible thoughts which could not exist without it.
Interpretation
Language is essential for expressing and developing thoughts that wouldn't exist otherwise.
Bertrand Russell's quote emphasizes the fundamental role of language in shaping our thoughts and ideas. It suggests that language is not merely a tool for communication but a crucial component in the very formation of complex thoughts and concepts, implying that without language, our cognitive abilities would be significantly limited.
In practice
In a discussion on the importance of literature, you might use this quote to highlight how storytelling shapes our understanding.
St. Paul introduced an entirely novel view of marriage, that it existed primarily to prevent the sin of fornication. It is just as if one were to maintain that the sole reason for baking bread is to prevent people from stealing cake.
Freedom comes only to those who no longer ask of life that it shall yield them any of those personal goods that are subject to the mutations of time.
Of these austerer virtues the love of truth is the chief, and in mathematics, more than elsewhere, the love of truth may find encouragement for waning faith. Every great study is not only an end in itself, but also a means of creating and sustaining a lofty habit of mind; and this purpose should be kept always in view throughout the teaching and learning of mathematics.
At all times, except when a monarch could enforce his will, war has been facilitated by the fact that vigorous males, confident of victory, enjoyed it, while their females admired them for their prowess.
Moreover, the attitude that one ought to believe such and such a proposition, independently of the question whether there is evidence in its favor, is an attitude which produces hostility to evidence and causes us to close our minds to every fact that does not suit our prejudices.
Extreme hopes are born from extreme misery.
God keeps the entire Universe in order, and still finds time to take a personal interest in you and me.
An allusion has been made to the Homestead Law. I think it worthy of consideration, and that the wild lands of the country should be distributed so that every man should have the means and opportunity of benefitting his condition.
Anything that you resent and strongly react to in another is also in you.
Christ did not die to make his Father loving, but because his Father is loving: the atoning blood is the outflow of the very heart of God toward us.
There is a canyon of difference between doing your best to glorify God and doing whatever it takes to glorify yourself. The quest for excellence is a mark of maturity. The quest for power is childish.
There is no more cruel illusion than that war makes a people richer.
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