“ However obvious these facts may appear at first glance, they are actually not so obvious as they seem except when we take special pains to think about the subject. Symbols and things symbolized are independent of each other; nevertheless, we all have a way of feeling as if […] there were necessary connections. For example, there is a vague sense we all have that foreign languages are inherently absurd; foreigners have such funny names for things, and why can't they call things by their right names? This feeling exhibits itself most strongly in those tourists who seem to believe that they can make the natives of any country understand English if they shout loud enough. Like the little boy who was reported to have said, "Pigs are called pigs because they are such dirty animals," they feel that the symbol is inherently connected in some way with the thing symbolized. Then there are the people who feel that since snakes are "nasty, slimy creatures" (incidentally, snakes are not slimy), the word "snake" is a nasty, slimy word.”

— S. I. Hayakawa , book Language in Thought and Action

</SPAN>
Source: Language in Thought and Action (1949), Language as Symbolism, p. 27

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S. I. Hayakawa 27

American politician 1906–1992

Jim Cymbala (1959) author, pastor

Source: Fresh Faith: What Happens When Real Faith Ignites God's People

“He was not accustomed to thinking about these things so bluntly, but the facts were as obvious as they were painful.”

Robert Charles Wilson book Memory Wire

Source: Memory Wire (1987), Chapter 21 (p. 181)

“When we think about the present, we veer wildly between the belief in chance and the evidence in favour of determinism. When we think about the past, however, it seems obvious that everything happened in the way that it was intended.”

Michel Houellebecq book Atomised

Source: The Elementary Particles

“The process of philosophizing, to my mind, consists mainly in passing from those obvious, vague, ambiguous things, that we feel quite sure of, to something precise, clear, definite, which by reflection and analysis we find is involved in the vague thing that we start from, and is, so to speak, the real truth of which that vague thing is a sort of shadow.”

Bertrand Russell (1872–1970) logician, one of the first analytic philosophers and political activist

1910s, The Philosophy of Logical Atomism (1918)

“[about the name Disturbed] It had been a name I have been contemplating for a band for years. It just seems to symbolize everything we were feeling at the time. The level of conformity that people are forced into was disturbing to us and we were just trying to push the envelope and the name just sorta made sense.”

David Draiman (1973) American singer and songwriter

Livewire's one on one - David Draiman talks disturbing thoughts http://www.webcitation.org/640D4asgh, concertlivewire.com, 19 February 2005)

“SPAN ID=The_process_by>The process by means of which human beings can arbitrarily make certan things stand for other things may be called the symbolic process. Whenever two or more human beings can communicate with each other, they can, by agreement, make anything stand for anything. For example, here are two symbols:
X Y
We can agree to let X stand for buttons and Y for bows; then we can freely change our agreement and let X stand for […] North Korea, and Y for South Korea. We are, as human beings, uniquely free to manufacture and manipulate and assign values to our symbols as we please. Indeed, we can go further by making symbols that stand for symbols. […] This freedom to create symbols of any assigned value and to create symbols that stand for symbols is essential to what we call the symbolic process. </SPAN”

S. I. Hayakawa book Language in Thought and Action

Source: Language in Thought and Action (1949), The Symbolic Process, p. 24

“Nature consists of the elements given by the senses. Primitive man first takes out of them certain complexes of these elements that present themselves with a certain stability and are most important to him. The first and oldest words are names for "things". … The sensations are no "symbols of things". On the contrary the "thing" is a mental symbol for a sensation-complex of relative stability. Not the things, the bodies, but colours, sounds, pressures, times (what we usually call sensations) are the true elements of the world.”

Ernst Mach (1838–1916) Austrian physicist and university educator

Source: 20th century, The Analysis of Sensations (1902), p. 23, as quoted in Lenin as Philosopher: A Critical Examination of the Philosophical Basis of Leninism (1948) by Anton Pannekoek, p. 454

“Women have a wonderful instinct about things. They can discover everything except the obvious.”

Oscar Wilde An Ideal Husband

Lord Goring, Act II
Source: An Ideal Husband (1895)

“The discipline of poetry may be expected first to teach the evocative power of words, to introduce the student, if we may so put it, to the mighty power of symbolism, and then to show him that there are ways of feeling about things which are not provincial either in space or time.”

Richard M. Weaver (1910–1963) American scholar

“The Power of the Word,” pp. 52-53.
Language is Sermonic (1970)

“You can't ever guess at life, at pain. All pain is real, and all pain is personal. It's the most personal thing we have. It eats each of us differently.”

Dave Eggers (1970) memoirist, novelist, short story writer, editor, publisher

Source: You Shall Know Our Velocity!

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S. I. Hayakawa 27

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