S. I. Hayakawa - Language Quotes

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Whether he realizes it or not, however, Mr. Mets is affected every hour of his life not only by the words he hears and uses, but also by his unconscious assumptions about language. [...] Such unconscious assumptions determine the effect that words have on him — which in turn determines the way he acts, whether wisely or foolishly. Words — the way he uses them and the way he takes them when spoken by others — largely shape his beliefs, his prejudices, his ideals, his aspirations. They constitute the moral and intellectual atmosphere in which he lives — in short, his semantic environment.

S. I. Hayakawa
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.

S. I. Hayakawa
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).

S. I. Hayakawa
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.

S. I. Hayakawa
A human being, then, is never dependent on his own experience alone for his information. Even in a primitive culture he can make use of the experience of his neighbors, friends, and relatives, which they communicate to him by means of language. Therefore, instead of remaining helpless because of the limitations of his own experience and knowledge, instead of having to discover what others have already discovered, instead of explporing the false traits they explored and repeating their errors, he can go on from where they left off. Language, that is to say, makes progress possible.

S. I. Hayakawa