What's sad is how rarely the reverse is true.

You mean good thought, right?
Because bad thought does it all the time.

What's sad is how rarely the reverse is true.

Since languages evolve, I wonder about the reverse also being true... that the way people think tends to be reflected in changes in the language.

To determine that, you would have to identify a way in which people think that has changed over time, and then see if there was a corresponding language time. A recent example that James has pointed out is how we access and process information now that we have the Internet - we tend to be better at finding and linking data rather than just memorizing it. One might ask how has this changed language, other than the fact that Google is a verb?

Interestingly, the Arabic words for left and right are also the words for south (yemeen, i.e. Yemen) and north (shamal, likely from Sham, i.e. Syria). This suggests the term came into use with an eastward orientation of whatever speaker(s) set the terms into Arabic grammar or lexicon.

Geographically, east and west are based on the rising and setting of the sun.

I think the consensus isn't so much that it "shapes" thought as much as it solidifies, over time, the neural channels associated with particular thought patterns with "view of world" analogs. The difference being that the brain of one language is still capable of rendering concepts of another language's brain.

Language doesn't condition thought but it does make some things easier to say and think. People whose language doesn't have a word for “red” can still see the color. However, having a word for something acts as a sort of hook for hanging ideas on. It makes it easier.