S. I. Hayakawa Quotes
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Definitions, contrary to popular opinion, tell us nothing about things. They only describe people's linguistic habits; that is, they tell us what noises people make under what conditions.
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In a real sense, people who have read good literature have lived more than people who cannot or will not read. It is not true that we have only one life to live; if we can read, we can live as many more lives and as many kinds of lives as we wish.
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I'm going to speak my mind because I have nothing to lose.
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It is the individual who knows how little they know about themselves who stands the most reasonable chance of finding out something about themselves before they die.
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It is not true that we have only one life to live; if we can read, we can live as many more lives and as many kinds of lives as we wish.
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So I will say it with relish. Give me a hamburger but hold the lawsuit.
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We live in a highly competitive society, each of us trying to outdo the other in wealth, in popularity or social prestige, in dress, in scholastic grades or golf scores. ... One is often tempted to say that conflict, rather than cooperation, is the great governing principle of human life.
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You guys are both saying the same thing. The only reason you're arguing is because you're using different words.
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If you see in any given situation only what everybody else can see, you can be said to be so much a representative of your culture that you are a victim of it.
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In the age of television, image becomes more important than substance.
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Notice the difference between what happens when a man says to himself, I have failed three times, and what happens when he says, I am a failure.
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America is an open society, more open than any other in the world. People of every race, of every color, of every culture are welcomed here to create a new life for themselves and their families. And what do these people who enter into the American mainstream have in common? English, our shared common language.
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In a very real sense, people who have read good literature have lived more than people who cannot or will not read.
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Republicans are people who, if you were drowning 50 feet from shore, would throw you a 25-foot rope and tell you to swim the other 25 feet because it would be good for your character. Democrats would throw you a hundred-foot rope and then walk away looking for other good deeds to do.
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Mr. Mets is representative not only of the general public, but also of many scientific workers, publicists, and writers. Like most people, he takes words as much for granted as the air he breathes, gives them about as much thought.
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Of all forms of symbolism, language is the most highly developed, most subtle, and most complicated. It has been pointed out that human beings, by agreement, can make anything stand for anything. Now, human beings have agreed, in the course of centuries of mutual dependency, to let the various noises that they can produce
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However obvious these facts may appear at first glance, they are actually not so obvious as they seem except when we take special pains to think about the subject. Symbols and things symbolized are independent of each other; nevertheless, we all have a way of feeling as if
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With words woven into almost every detail of his life, it seems amazing that Mr. Mets' thinking on the subject of language should be so limited.
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To be able to read and write, therefore, is to learn to profit by and take part in the greatest of human achievements - that which makes all other achievements possible -namely, the pooling of our experiences in great cooperative stores of knowledge, available
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But
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We select our furniture to serve as visible symbols of our taste, wealth, and social position. We often choose our residences on the basis of a feeling that it 'looks well' to have a 'good address.' We trade in perfectly good cars for later models, not always to get better transportation, but to give evidence to the community that we can afford it.
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If I spoke no English, my world would be limited to the Japanese-speaking community, and no matter how talented I was, I could never do business, seek employment or take part in public affairs outside that community.
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Those terrifying verbal jungles called laws are simply such directives, accumulated, codified, and systematized through the centuries.