I. Hayakawa
I. Hayakawa
opportunity keys participation
English is the key to full participation in the opportunities of American life.
work creativity ideas
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.
men civilization waiting
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.
grandfather maps lasts
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.
education teacher teaching
Good teachers never say anything. What they do is create the conditions under which learning takes place.
important age substance
In the age of television, image becomes more important than substance.
peace war squares
We should keep [the Panama Canal]. After all, we stole it fair and square.
views opposites ideas
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.
education children believe
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.
country bilingualism individual
Bilingualism for the individual is fine, but not for a country.
real reading people
In a very real sense, people who have read good literature have lived more than people who cannot or will not read.
party writing order
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.
philosophy selfish struggle
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.
character feet people
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.