Metaphorical Quotes

• Our tools are extensions of our purposes, and so we find it natural to make metaphorical attributions of intentionality to them; but I take it no philosophical ice is cut by such examples.

  John Searle

  Philosophical, Cutting, Ice

  "Minds, Brains and Programs". Book by John Searle, 1980.

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• Moreover, metaphor is typically viewed as characteristic of language alone, a matter of words rather than thought or action. For this reason, most people think they can get along perfectly well without metaphor. We have found, on the contrary, that 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

  Thinking, People, Monday Morning

  George Lakoff, Mark Johnson (2008). “Metaphors We Live By”, p.3, University of Chicago Press

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• 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

  Thinking, Everyday, Ordinary

  George Lakoff, Mark Johnson (2008). “Metaphors We Live By”, p.3, University of Chicago Press

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• Metaphors are dangerous. Love begins with a metaphor

  Milan Kundera

  Love Is, Unbearable Lightness Of Being, Metaphor

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• Metaphors are dangerous. Love begins with a metaphor. Which is to say, love begins at the point when a woman enters her first word into our poetic memory.

  Milan Kundera

  Love, Dream, Memories

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• Language operates between literal and metaphorical signification

  Robert Smithson

  Artist, Language, Literal

  Robert Smithson, Jack D. Flam (1996). “Robert Smithson, the Collected Writings”, p.61, Univ of California Press

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• But it then very soon became clear that the response of a war against terrorism, initially conceived of in a metaphorical sense, began to be taken increasingly seriously and came to entail waging a real war.

  Ulrich Beck

  Real, War, Taken

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• What I love about the theatre is that it's always metaphorical. It's like going back to being a kid again, and we're all pretending in a room. Sometimes, when the pretending really works, I find it much, much more moving than something on film.

  Mark Haddon

  Moving, Kids, Theatre

  "Mark Haddon: 'What I love about theatre is that it's like being a kid again'". Interview with Carole Cadwalladr, www.theguardian.com. March 27, 2010.

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• In India nearly everybody spoke metaphorically except the English who spoke bluntly and could make their most transparent lies look honest as a consequence; whereas any truth contained in these metaphorical rigmaroles was so deviously presented that it looked devious itself.

  Paul Scott

  Lying, India, Looks

  Paul Scott (2011). “The Raj Quartet, Volume 2: The Day of the Scorpion”, p.102, University of Chicago Press

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• Music, because of its specific and far-reaching metaphorical powers, can name the unnamable and communicate the unknowable.

  Leonard Bernstein

  Names, Reaching, Music Is

  Leonard Bernstein (1976). “The Unanswered Question: Six Talks at Harvard”, p.140, Harvard University Press

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• A great brand is a story that’s never completely told. A brand is a metaphorical story that connects with something very deep – a fundamental appreciation of mythology. Stories create the emotional context people need to locate themselves in a larger experience.

  Scott Bedbury

  Inspirational, Appreciation, Business

  "If the name fits ....", www.theguardian.com. January 7, 2001.

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• Running has taken me on adventures great and small, at home and around the world. It has provided me with hope and perseverance on days when I had none-and even, once every great while, warmed me with that fleeting ray of sunshine known as glory. Running has taught me that I can do anything, just so long as I keep putting one foot in front of the other. Sometimes that notion is metaphorical and sometimes not. In this way, I have been inspired to attempt things I would have never dreamed possible. And it all started with a single step.

  Martin Dugard

  Motivational, Running, Perseverance

  Martin Dugard (2011). “To Be a Runner: How Racing Up Mountains, Running with the Bulls, or Just Taking On a 5-K Makes You a Better Person (and the World a Better Place)”, p.7, Rodale

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• Any story worth telling relates to real life in some meaningful way. Scifi allows you to tell meaningful stories without seeming too preachy - it adds a metaphorical layer between the story and the real world. Scifi is dismissed as ungrounded fluff, but it's actually the opposite.

  Jane Espenson

  Meaningful, Real, Opposites

  "Caprica Producer Jane Espenson Redefines Racism in the BSG Universe". AMC interview, www.amc.com.

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• That the past is ahead, in front of us, is a conception of time that helps us retain our memories and to be aware of its presents. What is behind us [the future] cannot be seen and is liable to be forgotten readily. What is ahead of us [the past] cannot be forgotten so readily or ignored, for it is in front of our minds' eyes, always reminding us of its presence. The past is alive in us, so in more than a metaphorical sense the dead are alive - we are our history.

  Epeli Hau'ofa

  Memories, Eye, Past

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• All the moral laws are readily translated into natural philosophy, for often we have only to restore the primitive meaning of thewords by which they are expressed, or to attend to their literal instead of their metaphorical sense. They are already supernatural philosophy.

  Henry David Thoreau

  Philosophy, Philosophical, Law

  Henry David Thoreau (2013). “Delphi Complete Works of Henry David Thoreau (Illustrated)”, p.271, Delphi Classics

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• We have said that consciousness is an operation rather than a thing, a repository, or a function. It operates by way of analogy, by way of constructing an analog space with an analog 'I' that can observe that space, and move metaphorically in it. It operates on any reactivity, excerpts relevant aspects, narratizes and conciliates them together in a metaphorical space where such meanings can be manipulated like things in space.

  Julian Jaynes

  Moving, Space, Together

  Julian Jaynes (2000). “The Origin of Consciousness in the Breakdown of the Bicameral Mind”, p.75, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt

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• In early historical civilization, lunar symbols wove together three major metaphorical concepts. The first is the idea of fertility. The moon controls the tides of both water and blood – the sacred fluids of the early religions. The second is the concept of periodic rebirth, symbolized by the moon’s monthly waning and renewal. The third is the notion of continually repeating cycles of change.

  Layne Redmond

  Moon, Blood, Civilization

  Layne Redmond (1997). “When the Drummers Were Women: A Spiritual History of Rhythm”

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• Every religion, every mythology is true in this sense: It is true as metaphorical of the human and cosmic mystery.

  Joseph Campbell

  Religion, Mystery, Mythology

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• Cyberspace' is a metaphorical idea which is supposed to be the space where your consciousness is located when you're using computer technology on the Internet, for example, and I'm not entirely sure it's such a useful term, but I think that's what most people mean by it.

  Neil Postman

  Mean, Technology, Thinking

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• Metaphorical tone deafness is when people are unable to discern what is of value in something. I think I'm tone deaf to poetry, for instance. Despite having studied it into a second year of university, most of it just leaves me cold.

  Julian Baggini

  Thinking, Years, People

  "Being tone deaf to religion does matter" by Julian Baggini, www.theguardian.com. February 23, 2012.

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• On the whole, we're a murderous race. According to Genesis, it took as few as four people to make the planet too crowded to stand, and the first murder was a fratricide. Genesis says that in a fit of jealous rage, the very first child born to mortal parents, Cain, snapped and popped the first metaphorical cap in another human being. The attack was a bloody, brutal, violent, reprehensible killing. Cain's brother Abel probably never saw it coming. As I opened the door to my apartment, I was filled with a sense of empathic sympathy and intuitive understanding. For freaking Cain.

  Jim Butcher

  Brother, Children, Jealous

  Jim Butcher (2006). “Dead Beat: A Novel of The Dresden Files”, p.16, Penguin

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• All of us were slowly losing that intellectual light that allows you always to tell the similar from the identical, the metaphorical from the real.

  Umberto Eco

  Real, Thinking, Light

  Umberto Eco (2007). “Foucault's Pendulum”, p.465, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt

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• And what is the very essence of poetry if it is not this 'metaphorical language'-this marking of the before unapprehended relations of things?

  Owen Barfield

  Essence, Language, Relation

  Owen Barfield (1973). “Poetic Diction: A Study in Meaning”, p.67, Wesleyan University Press

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• I think about dying but I don't want to die. Not even close. In fact my problem is the complete opposite. I want to live, I want to escape. I feel trapped and bored and claustrophobic. There's so much to see and so much to do but I somehow still find myself doing nothing at all. I'm still here in this metaphorical bubble of existence and I can't quite figure out what the hell I'm doing or how to get out of it.

  Matthew Healy

  Thinking, Opposites, Bored

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• I beg the reader not to go in search of messages. It is a term that I detest because it distresses me greatly, for it forces on me clothes that are not mine, which in fact belong to a human type that I distrust; the prophet, the soothsayer, the seer. I am none of these; I'm a normal man with a good memory who fell into a maelstrom and got out of it more by luck than by virtue, and who from that time on has preserved a certain curiosity about maelstroms large and small, metaphorical and actual.

  Primo Levi

  Memories, Men, Clothes

  "The Mirror Maker" by Primo Levi, ("The Premise"), 1986.

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