Our concepts structure what we perceive, how we get around in the world and how we relate to other people. Our conceptual system thus plays a central role in defining our everyday realities.

For real human beings, the only realism is an embodied realism.

In all aspects of life... we define our reality in terms of metaphors and then proceed to act on the basis of the metaphors. We draw inferences, set goals, make commitments, and execute plans, all on the basis of how we in part structure our experience, consciously and unconsciously, by means of metaphor.

We know that someone who has channeled his anger into something constructive has not had a cow. How do we know these things?

One of the things cognitive science teaches us is that when people define their very identity by a worldview, or a narrative, or a mode of thought, they are unlikely to change-for the simple reason that it is physically part of their brain, and so many other aspects of their brain structure would also have to change that change is highly unlikely.

Unless you frame yourself, others will frame you — the media, your enemies, your competitors, your well-meaning friends.

The mind is inherently embodied. Thought is mostly unconscious. Abstract concepts are largely metaphorical.

The essence of metaphor is understanding and experiencing one kind of thing in terms of another.

The Public provides freedom...Individualism begins after the roads are built, after individualists have had an education, after medical research has cured their diseases.