52 Quotes by Edward Sapir

The attitude of independence toward a constructed language which all national speakers must adopt is really a great advantage, because it tends to make man see himself as the master of language instead of its obedient servant.

What fetters the mind and benumbs the spirit is ever the dogged acceptance of absolutes.

Fashion is custom in the guise of departure from custom

Human beings do not wish to be modest; they want to be as expressive - that is, as immodest - as fear allows; fashion helps them solve that paradoxical problem.

Were a language ever completely "grammatical" it would be a perfect engine of conceptual expression. Unfortunately, or luckily, no language is tyrannically consistent. All grammars leak.

Both French and Latin are involved with nationalistic and religious implications which could not be entirely shaken off, and so, while they seemed for a long time to have solved the international language problem up to a certain point, they did not really do so in spirit.

It would, of course, be hopeless to attempt to crowd into an international language all those local overtones of meaning which are so dear to the heart of the nationalist.

It is no secret that the fruits of language study are in no sort of relation to the labour spent on teaching and learning them.

Cultural anthropology is not valuable because it uncovers the archaic in the psychological sense. It is valuable because it is constantly rediscovering the normal.