S I Hayakawa Quotes

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.

In a very 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 lead; if we can read, we can live as many more lives and as many kinds of lives as we wish.

It is not true we have only one life to love, if we can read, we can live as many lives and as many kinds of lives as we wish.

Love? I always thought love was just something that ate away your sanity, left you with an inferiority complex, and filled you with jealousy...and bitterness. Noi-chan told me all about love... and now I know the truth. Love is an illusion. Nothing more than that. Anyway, it has nothing to do with me. <3 So many people get hung up on love while life passes them by.

It is not true that we have only one life to live; if we can read, we can live us many more lives and as many kind of lives as we wish.

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.

To perceive how language works, what pitfalls it conceals, what its possibilities are, is to comprehend a crucial aspect of the complicated business of living the life of a human being.

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.

Exactitude is the lowest form of pictorial gratification.

If our ideas and beliefs are held with an awareness of abstracting, they can be changed if found to be inadequate or erroneous. But if they are held without an awareness of abstracting-if our mental maps are believed to be the territory-they are prejudices. As teachers or parents, we cannot help passing on to the young a certain amount of misinformation and error, however hard we may try not to. But if we teach them to be habitually conscious of the process of abstraction, we give them the means by which to free themselves from whatever erroneous notions we may have inadvertently taught them.

If a man were to spend years of his life trying to discover the chemical constituency of salt water without bothering to find out what has already been said on the subject in any elementary chemistry book, we should say that he was making very imperfect use of the resources available to us. Similarly, can it not be said that people, worrying themselves sick over their individual frustrations, constantly suffering from petty irritations and hypertensions, are making extremely imperfect use of the available human resources of adjustment when they fail to strengthen and quiet themselves through contact with literature, music, painting, and the other arts?

Citizens of a modern society need [...] more than that ordinary "common sense" which was defined by Stuart Chase as that which tells you that the world is flat.

Even though I only feel warmth at those times, the moment I leave, I start to get cold again, and I fear that even my heart will turn to ice.

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.

A classic is a work which gives pleasure to the minority which is intensely and permanently interested in literature. It lives on because the minority, eager to renew the sensation of pleasure, is eternally curious and is therefore engaged in an eternal process of rediscovery. A classic does not survive because of any ethical reason it does not survive because it conforms to certain canons, or because neglect would kill it. It survived because it is a source of pleasure and because the passionate few can no more neglect it then a bee can neglect a flower. The passionate few do not read "the right things" because they are right. That is to put the cart before the horse "the right things" are the right things solely because the passionate few like reading them … Nobody at all is quite in a position to choose with certainty among modern works. To sift the wheat from the chaff is a process that takes an exceedingly long time. Modern works have to pass before the bar of the taste of successive Generations; whereas, with Classics, which have been through the ordeal, almost the reverse is the case. Your taste has to pass before the bar of the classics. That is the point. If you differ with a classic, it is you who are wrong, and not the book. If you differ with a modern work, you may be wrong or you may be right, but no judge is authoritative to decide your taste is unformed. It needs guidance and it needs authoritative guidance. Arnold Bennett, Literary Taste: How to Form It, as quoted by S. I. Hayakawa

It is not true we have only one life to live…if we can read, we can live as many lives and as many kinds of lives as we wish.

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 tagline “thanks for listening,” which has been so copied and admired, derived from the successful 1976 senatorial campaign of S. I. Hayakawa. Hayakawa was a professor of linguistics at San Francisco State University (before he became university president). He knew how to use the English language. The calm manner of his radio commercials, his thanking the listener for staying tuned, really impressed me and, six years later, provided the chassis and the closer for Trader Joe’s commercials. We used the commercials to keep us in front of the public between editions of the Fearless Flyer. We didn’t do both at the same time, or else the stores would have been overwhelmed with business. In short, the radio commercials were and are extremely effective. In the course of this, my voice became one of the best known in California.

And S. I. Hayakawa, multiplex stringman. I’d tell you not to fret but that would spoil your playing.” Freddie cackled merrily at his pun, then pointed his plastic weapon at the gross musician who joined feebly in the

Maar laten wij twisten over wat er is gezegd en niet over wat niet gezegd is