Lawrence Weinstein > Quotes

“According to Whorf, any language will do more than enable its speakers to convey their thinking to each other: It will also somewhat mold their thinking. Whorf argued that, by making certain thoughts easier to express than others, a language helps determine what one thinks and feels in the first place. In English, for example, we have tenses that separate the present from the past—that put the past behind us, in effect, implying it will never come again—and most of us who think in English therefore try not to “waste” time; we move frenziedly. By comparison, the Hopi Indians Whorf studied, whose management of tense implied that “every thing that ever happened still is,” had less anxiety than most of us do and led more measured lives. A language, Whorf believed, can contribute either to neuroses (his term) or to more expansive, adaptive ways of thinking and being.”
― Lawrence Weinstein, Grammar for a Full Life: How the Ways We Shape a Sentence Can Limit or Enlarge Us

“The conversion efficiency (the ratio of animal feed to animal weight) varies from two for chickens and fish through four for pork to seven for beef [17].”
― Lawrence Weinstein, Guesstimation: Solving the World's Problems on the Back of a Cocktail Napkin

“Possibly the subtlest enforcer of the status quo is our use of proper nouns—that is, names.”
― Lawrence Weinstein, Grammar for a Full Life: How the Ways We Shape a Sentence Can Limit or Enlarge Us

“As a member of the same species to which this fund manager belongs, I must also have it in me to take action despite setbacks and the ongoing risks in my world.”
― Lawrence Weinstein, Grammar for a Full Life: How the Ways We Shape a Sentence Can Limit or Enlarge Us