S. I. Hayakawa · Vinony

S. I. Hayakawa · Vinony

Quotes

“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 [...] to all. From the warning cry of primitive man to the latest newsflash or scientific monograph, language is social. Cultural and intellectual cooperation is the great principle of human life.”
“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.”
“From the moment he switches on an early-morning news broadcast until he falls asleep at night over a novel or a magazine, he is, like all other people living in modern civilized conditions, swimming in words. Newspaper editors, politicians, salesmen, disc jockeys, columnists, luncheon club speakers, and clergymen; colleagues at work, friends, relatives, wife and children; market reports, direct-mail advertising, books, and billboards -- all are assailing him with words all day long. [...]”
“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.”
“The relation between language and thought are discussed in Stuart Chase, Power of words (1954), especially Chapter 10; the important sourcebooks in this area are Alfred Korzybski, Science and Sanity: An Introduction to Non-Aristotelian Systems and General Semantics, 4th ed. (1958), and John B. Carroll, ed., Language, Thought, and Reality: Selected Writings of Benjamin Lee Whorf (1956).”
“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.2”

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