Quotes from S.I. Hayakawa

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.