Metaphor lives a secret life all around us. We utter about six metaphors a minute. Metaphorical thinking is essential to how we understand ourselves and others, how we communicate and learn, discover and invent.
James GearyRead
Metaphor is not just the detection of patterns; it is the creation of patterns.
Interpretation
What this quote means
Metaphor shapes how we understand and create ideas by identifying and constructing patterns.
James Geary's quote highlights the dual role of metaphor in human cognition. It suggests that while metaphors help us recognize existing patterns in our experiences, they also empower us to forge new connections and interpretations, ultimately shaping our understanding of the world around us.
Themes
MetaphorPatternsCreativityUnderstandingConnection
In practice
Example use cases
In a poetry workshop, one could use this quote to illustrate the power of metaphor in crafting imagery.
More from James Geary
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The theme of the diary is always the personal, but it does not mean only a personal story: it means a personal relationship to all things and people. The personal, if it is deep enough, becomes universal, mythical, symbolic; I never generalize, intellectualise. I see, I hear, I feel. These are my primitive elements of discovery. Music, dance, poetry and painting are the channels for emotion. It is through them that experience penetrates our bloodstream.
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In Paris, we call the people who make clothing 'couturiers' - they develop new clothing items - but actually, the work of designing is to make something that works in real life.
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All fiction is about people, unless it's about rabbits pretending to be people. It's all essentially characters in action, which means characters moving through time and changes taking place, and that's what we call 'the plot'.
Margaret AtwoodRead
I joyfully hasten to meet death. If it come before I have had opportunity to develop all my artistic faculties, it will come, my hard fate notwithstanding, too soon, and I should probably wish it later - yet even then I shall be happy, for will it not deliver me from a state of endless suffering?
Ludwig Van BeethovenRead
You must talk to me, Caravaggio. Or am I just a book? Something to be read, some creature to be tempted out of a loch and shot full of morphine, full of corridors, lies, loose vegetation, pockets of stones.
Michael OndaatjeRead
I'm leaving the screen because I don't think I am very good in the pictures and I have this beautiful dream that I'm elegant on the stage.
Helen HayesRead