[...] those who read and think without the slightest use of sound imagery are [...] dependent on it. They are merely handling the circulating medium [...] of visual symbols as a convenient substitute for the economic goods and services of the fundamental auditory symbols.
- Sapir (1921), a pag.20

[...] we are not in the least concerned with whether or not a language is of great practical value or is the medium of a great culture. All these considerations, important from other standpoints, have nothing to do with form value.
- Sapir (1921), a pag.124

The possibilities of individual expression are infinite, language in particular is the most fluid of mediums. Yet some limitation there must be to this freedom, some resistance of the medium.
- Sapir (1921), a pag.221

No sooner [...] does the artist transgress the law of his medium than we realize with a start that there is a medium to obey. Language is the medium of literature as marble or bronze or clay are the materials of the sculptor.
- Sapir (1921), a pag.222

[...] in the art of literature there are not intertwined two distinct kinds or levels of art -a generalized, non-linguistic art, which can be transferred without loss into an alien linguistic medium, and a specifically linguistic art that is not transferable.
- Sapir (1921), a pag.222

Literature moves in language as a medium, but that medium comprises two layers, the latent content of language [...] and the particular conformation of a given language- the specific how of our record of experience.
- Sapir (1921), a pag.223

A scientific truth [...] is untinctured by the particular linguistic medium in which it finds expression. [...] The proper medium of scientific expression is [...] a generalized language that may be defined as a symbolic algebra of which all known languages are translations.
- Sapir (1921), a pag.223

A Bach fugue is transferable into another set of musical timbres without serious loss of esthetic significance. Chopin plays with the language of the piano as though no other language existed (the medium 'disappears') [...]
- Sapir (1921), a pag.223

Literary expression is personal and concrete, but this does not mean that its significance is altogether bound up with the accidental qualities of the medium.
- Sapir (1921), a pag.224