Language is purely human and non-instinctive method of communicating ideas, emotions, and desires by means of voluntarily produced symbols.
- Sapir (1921), a pag.8

Language [...] consists of a peculiar symbolic relation - physiologically an arbitrary one - between all possible elements of consciousness on the one hand and certain selected elements localized in the auditory, motor [...] tracts on the other.
- Sapir (1921), a pag.10

[...] we have [...] to accept language as a fully formed functional system within man's psychic or 'spiritual' constitution [...] much the psycho-physical basis is essential to its functioning in the individual.
- Sapir (1921), a pag.10

Our study of language is [..] to be an inquiry into the function and form of the arbitrary systems of symbolism that we term languages [...]
- Sapir (1921), a pag.11

[...] the essence of language consists in the assigning of conventional, voluntarily articulated, sounds, or their equivalents, to the diverse elements of experience.
- Sapir (1921), a pag.11

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

[...] language can be but the outward facet of thought on the highest [...] level of symbolic expression [...]
- Sapir (1921), a pag.15

[...] language is primarily a pre-rational function. It humbly works up to the thought that is latent in, that may be eventually be read into, its classifications and its forms [...]
- Sapir (1921), a pag.15

Language is primarily an auditory system of symbols. [...] it is also a motor system, but the motor aspect of speech is clearly secondary to the auditory [...]
- Sapir (1921), a pag.17

[...] language, which lies [...] in the classification, in the formal patterning, and in the relating of concepts.[...] is on its inner face the mold of thought.
- Sapir (1921), a pag.22

[...] language is an immensely ancient heritage of the human race, whether or not all forms of speech are the historical outgrowth of a single pristine form.
- Sapir (1921), a pag.23

Language in its fundamental forms is the symbolic expression of human intuitions. These may shape themselves in a hundred ways, regardless of the material advancement or backwardness of the people that handle the forms, of which [...] they are in the main unconscious.
- Sapir (1921), a pag.124

Languages [...] are exceedinly complex historical structures. It is of less importance to put each language in a neat pigeon-hole than to have evolved a flexible method which enables us to place it, from two or three independent standpoints, relatively to another language.
- Sapir (1921), a pag.140

Languages are in constant process of change, but it is only reasonable to suppose that they tend to preserve longest what is most fundamental in their structure.
- Sapir (1921), a pag.144

[...] a group of languages need not in the least correspond to a racial groups or culture area [...] a single language intercrosses with race and culture lines.
- Sapir (1921), a pag.209

Language is the most massive and inclusive art we know, a mountainous and anonymous work of unconscious generations.
- Sapir (1921), a pag.220

Languages are [...] invisible garments that drape themselves about our spirit and give a predetermined form to all its symbolic expression.
- Sapir (1921), a pag.221

The possibilities of individual expression are infinite, language in particular is the most fluid of mediums.
- Sapir (1921), a pag.221

Language is the medium of literature as marble or bronze or clay are the materials of the sculptor.
- Sapir (1921), a pag.222

Language is itself the collective art of expression, a summary of thousands upon thousands of individual intuitions.
- Sapir (1921), a pag.231