Language moves down time in a current of its own making. It has a drift.
- Sapir (1921), a pag.150

The linguistic drift has a direction [...] only those individual variations embody it or carry it which move in a certain direction, just as only certain wave movements in the bay outline the tide.
- Sapir (1921), a pag.155

The drift of a language is constituted by the unconscious selection on the part of its speakers of those individual variations that are cumulative in some special direction.
- Sapir (1921), a pag.155

In the long run any new feature of the drift becomes part and parcel of the common, accepted speech, but for a long time it may exist as a mere tendency in the speech of a few, perhaps of a despised few.
- Sapir (1921), a pag.155

[...] knowledge of the general drift of a language is insufficient to enable us to see clearly where the drift is heading for.
- Sapir (1921), a pag.163

At least three drifts of major importance are discernible [...] The first is the familiar tendency to level the distinction between the subjective and the objective [...] the tendency to fixed position in the sentence[...] the drift toward the invariable word.
- Sapir (1921), a pag.163

Nothing is perfectly static. Every word, every grammatical element, every locution, every sound and accent is a slowly changing configuration, molded by the invisible and impersonal drift that is the life of language.
- Sapir (1921), a pag.170

[...] we do not yet understand the primary cause or causes of the slow drift in phonetics, though we can frequently point to contributing factors.
- Sapir (1921), a pag.183

The drift of language is not properly concerned with changes of content at all, merely with changes in formal expression.
- Sapir (1921), a pag.218