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.
S. I. HayakawaThose terrifying verbal jungles called laws are simply such directives, accumulated, codified, and systematized through the centuries.
S. I. HayakawaAmerica is an open society, more open than any other in the world. People of every race, of every color, of every culture are welcomed here to create a new life for themselves and their families. And what do these people who enter into the American mainstream have in common? English, our shared common language.
S. I. HayakawaWe live in a highly competitive society, each of us trying to outdo the other in wealth, in popularity or social prestige, in dress, in scholastic grades or golf scores. One is often tempted to say that conflict, rather than cooperation, is the great governing principle of human life.
S. I. HayakawaFew 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.
S. I. Hayakawa