Language may be looked upon as an instrument capable of running a gamut of psychic uses. Its flow not only parallels that of the inner content of consciousness, but parallels it on different levels [...]
- Sapir (1921), a pag.14

[...] the outward form only of language is constant; its inner meaning, its psychic value or intensity, varies freely with attention or the selective interest of the mind, also [...] with the mind's general development.
- Sapir (1921), a pag.14

The auditory symbolism may be replaced [...] by a motor or by a visual symbolism (many people can read [...] in a purely visual sense, that is, without the intermediating link of an inner flow of the auditory images that correspond to the printed or written words) [...]
- Sapir (1921), a pag.16

[...] language, as a structure, is on its inner face the mold of thought. It is this abstracted language [...] that is to concern us in our inquiry.
- Sapir (1921), a pag.22

[...] emphasis, tone, and phrasing, the varying speed and continuity of utterance, the accompanying bodily movements, all these express something of the inner life of impulse and feeling [...]
- Sapir (1921), a pag.39

[...] the mere phonetic framework of speech does not constitute the inner fact of language and that the single sound of articulated speech is not, as such, a linguistic element at all.
- Sapir (1921), a pag.42

'Derivational Concepts' [...] : normally expressed by affixing non-radical elements to radical elements or by inner modification of these [...]
- Sapir (1921), a pag.101

[...] in exotic languages, [...] we may be quite sure of the analysis of the words in a sentence and yet not succeed in acquiring that inner 'feel' of its structure [...]
- Sapir (1921), a pag.102

An inflective language like Latin or Greek uses the method of fusion, and this fusion has an inner psychological as well as an outer phonetic meaning.
- Sapir (1921), a pag.135

It is possible [...] to change every sound, word, and concrete concept of a language without changing its inner actuality in the least [...]
- Sapir (1921), a pag.218