S. I. Hayakawa

"Now, to use the famous metaphor by Alfred Korzybski in his Science and Sanity , this verbal world ought to stand in relation to the extensional world as a map does to the territory it is supposed to r…"

"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 i…"

"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 e…"

"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 t…"

"In the case of drama , 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 othe…"

"Such complicated and apparently unnecessary behavior leads philosophers, both amateur and professional, to ask over and over again, "Why can't human beings live simply and naturally?" Often the comple…"

"A frustrated or unhappy animal can do relatively little about its tensions. A human being, however, with an extra dimension to move around in, not only undergoes experience, but he also symbolizes his…"

"We all inherit a great deal of useless knowledge, and a great deal of misinformation and error , so that there is always a portion of what we have been told that must be discarded. But the cultural he…"