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. — S. I. Hayakawa Copy Share Image
The language we share is at the core of our identity as citizens, and our ticket to full participation in American political life. We… — S. I. Hayakawa Copy Share Image
It is the individual who knows how little they know about themselves who stands the most reasonable chance of finding out something about themselves… — S. I. Hayakawa Copy Share Image
So I will say it with relish. Give me a hamburger but hold the lawsuit. — S. I. Hayakawa Copy Share Image
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… — S. I. Hayakawa Copy Share Image
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 Copy Share Image
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… — S. I. Hayakawa Copy Share Image
We live in a highly competitive society, each of us trying to outdo the other in wealth, in popularity or social prestige, in dress,… — S. I. Hayakawa Copy Share Image
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… — S. I. Hayakawa Copy Share
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… — S. I. Hayakawa Copy Share
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… — S. I. Hayakawa Copy Share
Good teachers never say anything. What they do is create the conditions under which learning takes place. — S. I. Hayakawa Copy Share Image
