I have a hankering to go back to the Orient and discard my necktie. Neckties strangle clear thinking.

Lin Yutang’s quip uses the necktie as a symbol of Western formality and the social pressures that come with it. The “hankering” to return to the “Orient” suggests a longing for cultural habits he associates with greater ease, naturalness, and personal freedom. Saying that neckties “strangle clear thinking” is comic hyperbole, but it also implies that constricting conventions—dress codes, status display, and performative respectability—can inhibit intellectual independence. The line fits Lin’s broader tendency to contrast comfort and humane living with rigid modern “civilization,” and to treat everyday objects as moral and cultural metaphors.