"Speech is an acoustic reality, writing a visual one. Performance of the former has been perfected through a million years of natural selection in the evolutionary process. The latter is a trick which we began to learn only yesterday (in terms of evolutionary time). To "hear" language (and to "say" it) is programmed in our genes; to "see" it (and "read" it) is not."
Quote Details
Added by wikiquote-import-bot
Unverified quote
0 likes
Original Language: English
Available Languages (1)
Sources
"Chinese Characters and the Greek Alphabet" in Sino-Platonic Papers, 5 (December 1987)
https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Eric_A._Havelock
Revision History
No revisions have been submitted for this quote.
Categories
Eric A. Havelock
Eric Alfred Havelock (3 June 1903 – 4 April 1988) was a professor at the University of Toronto and was active in the academic milieu of the Canadian socialist movement during the 1930s. In the 1960s and 1970s, he served as chair of the classics departments at both Harvard and Yale.
5 quotes on TrueQuotesView all quotes by Eric A. Havelock →
Related Quotes
"Could it be argued that if the Chinese revolution seems to be a response to the needs of rural society, whereas the R…"
"What our story, however, has demonstrated is the astonishingly checkered, not to say hazardous, career of a reading d…"
"A scholar like myself who is not a Sinologist and yet ventures the proposition that Chinese languages should be rewri…"
"Over the years, I have become convinced that Hellenism as a culture represents not a static condition of uniform subl…"
"Americans have always been especially prone to regard all things as resulting from the free choice of a free will. Pr…"
"Democracy is clearly most appropriate for countries which enjoy an economic surplus and least appropriate for countri…"
"Here, for the last time together, appeared a triumvirate of old men, relics of a golden age, who still towered like g…"
"What is mind? No matter. What is matter? Never mind."
"The West, at bottom, is a form of society, rather than an area. It is the term applied to the region whose social con…"
"American democracy was born of no theorist's dream; it was not carried in the Sarah Constant to Virginia, nor in the …"