- "But it is all wrong, all wrong. The idea that thought is the same thing as language is an example of what can be called a conventional absurdity: a statement that goes against all common sense but that everyone believes because they dimly recall having heard it somewhere and because it is so pregnant with implications. (The "fact" that we use only 5% of our brains, that lemmings commit mass suicide, that the Boy Scout Manual annually outsells all other books, and that we can be coerced into buying subliminal messages are other examples.)"- "As I showed in The Language Instinct, sentences in a spoken language like English or Japanese are designed for vocal communication between impatient, intelligent social beings."- "They achieve brevity by leaving out any information that the listener can mentally fill in from the context. In contrast, the 'language of thought' in which knowledge is couched can leave nothing to the imagination, because it is the imagination."

Then try StudyFetch, the AI-powered platform that can answer your questions and teach you more about it!