S. I. Hayakawa Quotes

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All quotes by S. I. Hayakawa: Children Culture English Language Language Students more...
  • The United States, a land of immigrants from every corner of the world, has been strengthened and unified because its newcomers have historically chosen ultimately to forgo their native language for the English language. We have all benefited from the sharing of ideas, of cultures and beliefs, made possible by a common language. We have all enriched each other.

  • 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 (1941). “LANGUAGE IN ACTION”
  • Agreement is brought about by changing people's minds - other people's.

  • The language we share is at the core of our identity as citizens, and our ticket to full participation in American political life. We can speak any language we want at the dinner table, but English is the language of public discourse, or the marketplace and of the voting booth.

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

  • 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.

  • The English Language Amendment says above all, 'Let's see to it that our children, our young people, learn English. Let us not deny them the opportunity to participate in American life, so that they can go as far as their dreams and talents can take them.

  • The great thing about the United States is our ability to absorb foreign people and make them a part of us.

  • 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.

  • English, our common language, binds our diverse people.

  • Patriotic societies seem to think that the way to educate school children in a democracy is to stage bigger and better flag-saluting.

  • I believe we are being dishonest with language minority groups if we tell them they can take full part in American life without learning the English language.

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

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

  • The United States is enriched by many cultures, and united by a single common language.

  • 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.

  • 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 (1941). “LANGUAGE IN ACTION”
  • 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.

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

    "Language in Thought and Action". Book by S. I. Hayakawa (p.27-28), 1991.
  • Learning to write is learning to think. You don't know anything clearly unless you can state it in writing.

  • How anybody dresses is indicative of his self-concept. If students are dirty and ragged, it indicates they are not interested in tidying up their intellects either.

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

  • 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.

  • Animals struggle with each other for food or for leadership, but they do not, like human beings, struggle with each other for thatthat stands for food or leadership: such things as our paper symbols of wealth (money, bonds, titles), badges of rank to wear on our clothes, or low-number license plates, supposed by some people to stand for social precedence. For animals the relationship in which one thing stands for something else does not appear to exist except in very rudimentary form.

  • I'm going to speak my mind because I have nothing to lose.

  • 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.

  • Those terrifying verbal jungles called laws are simply such directives, accumulated, codified, and systematized through the centuries.

  • 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.

  • The last thing a scientist would do is cling to a map because he inherited it from his grandfather, or because it was used by George Washington or Abraham Lincoln.

    S. I. HAYAKAWA (1941). “LANGUAGE IN ACTION”
  • 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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  • We hope you have found the saying you were looking for in our collection! At the moment, we have collected 43 quotes from the Former United States Senator S. I. Hayakawa, starting from July 18, 1906! We periodically replenish our collection so that visitors of our website can always find inspirational quotes by authors from all over the world! Come back to us again!
    S. I. Hayakawa quotes about: Children Culture English Language Language Students

    S. I. Hayakawa

    • Born: July 18, 1906
    • Died: February 27, 1992
    • Occupation: Former United States Senator