Lakoff, George (2004) Don’t Think of an Elephant: Know your Values and Frame the Debate: The Essential Guide for Progressive. Vermont: Chelsea Green Publishing

When we negate a frame, we evoke the frame. – 03

When you are arguing against the other side: Do not use their language. Their language picks out a frame – and it won’t be the frame you want. – 03

Framing is about language that fits your worldview. It is not just language. The ideas are primary – and the language carries those ideas, evokes those ideas. – 04

A do-gooder is someone who is trying to help someone else rather than herself and is getting in the way of those who are pursuing their self-interest. Do-gooders screw up the system. – 08

To be accepted, the truth must fit people’s frames. If the facts do not fit the frame, the frames stays and the facts bounce off. – 17

Concepts are not things that can be changed just by someone telling us a fact. We may be presented with facts, but for us to make sense of them, they have to fit what is already in the synapses of the brain. – 17

If you keep their language and their framing and just argue against it, you lose from your perspective. – 33

Each of us, in the premotor cortex of our brains, has what one called mirror neurons. Such neurons fire either we perform an action or when we see the same action performed by someone else. There are connections from that part of the brain to the emotional centers. Such neural circuits are believed to be basis of empathy. – 54

One of the fundamental findings of cognitive science is that people think in terms of frames and metaphors – conceptual structures like those we have been describing. The frames are in the synapses of our brains, physically present in the form of neural circuitry. When the facts don’t fit the frames, the frames are kept and facts ignored. - 73

Reframing is not just about words and language. Reframing is about ideas. The ideas have to be place in people’s brains before the sound bite can make any sense. – 105