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.
We have triumphed in the effort to implant hope in the breasts of the millions of our people. We enter into a covenant that we shall build the society in which all South Africans, both black and white, will be able to walk tall, without any fear in their hearts, assured of their inalienable right to human dignity β a rainbow nation at peace with itself and the world.
It was reasonable to struggle, to suffer, perhaps even to die, for a more just, a more compassionate society, but not in a world with no future where, all to soon, the very words "justice," "compassion," "society," "struggle," "evil," would be unheard echoes on an empty air.
With some people solitariness is an escape not from others but from themselves. For they see in the eyes of others only a reflection of themselves.
Because something or someone looks or acts differently from us does not necessarily mean that it is ugly or bad.
What white man can say I never stole his land or a penny of his money? Yet they say that I am a thief.
As long as people will shed the blood of innocent creatures there can be no peace, no liberty, no harmony between people. Slaughter and justice cannot dwell together.
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