S. I. Hayakawa Quotes

Quotes about:

• Learning to write is learning to think. You don't know anything clearly unless you can state it in writing.

  S. I. Hayakawa

  Inspirational, Writing, Thinking

  45 Copy quote

• The meanings of words are not in the words, they are in us.

  S. I. Hayakawa

  Meanings Of Words

  S. I. HAYAKAWA (1941). “LANGUAGE IN ACTION”

  33 Copy quote

• 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.

  S. I. Hayakawa

  Life, Book, Reading

  75 Copy quote

• 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.

  S. I. Hayakawa

  Character, Feet, People

  56 Copy quote

• Few people...have had much training in listening. The training of most oververbalized professional intellectuals is in the opposite direction. Living in a competitive culture, most of us are most of the time chiefly concerned with getting our own views across, and we tend to find other people's speeches a tedious interruption of the flow of our own ideas.

  S. I. Hayakawa

  Views, Opposites, Ideas

  31 Copy quote

• 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.

  S. I. Hayakawa

  Finding Yourself, Littles, Chance

  53 Copy quote

• We should keep [the Panama Canal]. After all, we stole it fair and square.

  S. I. Hayakawa

  Peace, War, Squares

  57 Copy quote

• Language is a unifying instrument which binds people together. When people speak one language they become as one, they become a society.

  S. I. Hayakawa

  People, Together, Language

  31 Copy quote

• 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.

  S. I. Hayakawa

  Work, Creativity, Ideas

  23 Copy quote

• Good teachers never say anything. What they do is create the conditions under which learning takes place.

  S. I. Hayakawa

  Education, Teacher, Teaching

  28 Copy quote

• In a very real sense, people who have read good literature have lived more than people who cannot or will not read.

  S. I. Hayakawa

  Real, Book, Reading

  1941 Language in Action.

  42 Copy quote

• 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.

  S. I. Hayakawa

  Failure, Men, Differences

  S. I. HAYAKAWA (1941). “LANGUAGE IN ACTION”

  12 Copy quote

• People who think of themselves as tough-minded and realistic, among them influential political leaders and businessmen as well as go-getters and hustlers of smaller caliber, tend to take it for granted that human nature is selfish and that life is a struggle in which only the fittest may survive. According to this philosophy, the basic law by which man must live, in spite of his surface veneer of civilization, is the law of the jungle. The "fittest" are those who can bring to the struggle superior force, superior cunning, and superior ruthlessness.

  S. I. Hayakawa

  Philosophy, Selfish, Struggle

  "Language in Thought and Action". Book by S. I. Hayakawa (p. 8), 1949.

  30 Copy quote

• You guys are both saying the same thing. The only reason you're arguing is because you're using different words.

  S. I. Hayakawa

  Guy, Different, Arguing

  26 Copy quote

• You just don't know anything unless you can write it. Sure you can argue things out in your own head and bring them out at parties, but in order to argue anything thoroughly, you must be able to put it down on paper.

  S. I. Hayakawa

  Party, Writing, Order

  26 Copy quote

• Ever since man began to till the soil and learned not to eat the seed grain but to plant it and wait for harvest, the postponement of gratification has been the basis of a higher standard of living and of civilization.

  S. I. Hayakawa

  Men, Civilization, Waiting

  13 Copy quote

• Bilingualism for the individual is fine, but not for a country.

  S. I. Hayakawa

  Country, Bilingualism, Individual

  28 Copy quote

• McDonalds in Tokyo is a terrible revenge for Pearl Harbor.

  S. I. Hayakawa

  Revenge, Mcdonalds, Pearls

  11 Copy quote

• The traditional educational theory is to the effect that the way to bring up children is to keep them innocent (i.e., believing in biological, political, and socioeconomic fairy tales) as long as possible ... that students should be given the best possible maps of the territories of experience in order that they may be prepared for life, is not as popular as might be assumed.

  S. I. Hayakawa

  Education, Children, Believe

  29 Copy quote

• In the age of television, image becomes more important than substance.

  S. I. Hayakawa

  Important, Age, Substance

  23 Copy quote

• 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.

  S. I. Hayakawa

  Race, Color, America

  26 Copy quote

• 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.

  S. I. Hayakawa

  People, Definitions, Noise

  S. I. HAYAKAWA (1941). “LANGUAGE IN ACTION”

  6 Copy quote

• If everybody is rewarded just for being alive, you get the same sort of effect as you do when you reward every student just for being enrolled. You destroy not only education, you destroy society by giving A's to everyone. This is a philosophical consideration that bothers me very much as I sit in the United States Senate and see the great budget allocations going through.

  S. I. Hayakawa

  Philosophical, Giving, Society

  21 Copy quote

• In the case of drama (stage, movies, television ), there appear to be people in almost every audience who never quite fully realize that a play is a set of fictional, symbolic representations. An actor is one who symbolizes other people, real or imagined. [...] Also some years ago it was reported that when Edward G. Robinson, who used to play gangster roles with extraordinary vividness, visited Chicago, local hoodlums would telephone him at his hotel to pay their professional respects.

  S. I. Hayakawa

  Real, Drama, Years

  "Language in Thought and Action". Book by S. I. Hayakawa (p.27-28), 1991.

  10 Copy quote

• Advertising is a symbol-manipulating occupation

  S. I. Hayakawa

  Occupation, Advertising, Symbols

  "Language in Thought and Action". Book by S. I. Hayakawa (p. 269), 1991.

  6 Copy quote

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