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

The true, significant elements of language are [...] words, significant parts of words, or word groupings. What distinguishes each of these elements is that it is the outward sign of a specific idea [...]
- Sapir (1921), a pag.25

[...] 'sing' is a kind of twilight word, trembling between the status of [...] radical element and that of a modified word [...] it has no outward sign to indicate that it conveys more than a generalized idea [...]
- Sapir (1921), a pag.27

It is precisely the failure to feel the 'value' or 'tone,' as distinct from the outer significance, of the concept expressed by a given grammatical element that has so often led students to misunderstand the nature of languages profoundly alien to their own.
- Sapir (1921), a pag.103

[...] the elements '-ihl', -'minih',-'is', and '-it', quite aside from the relatively concrete or abstract nature of their content and aside [...] from the degree of their outer (phonetic) cohesion with the elements that precede them, have a psychological independence [...]
- Sapir (1921), a pag.134

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

[...] the apprehension of the scientific truth is itself a linguistic process, for thought is nothing but language denuded of its outward garb.
- Sapir (1921), a pag.223

Bach speaks the language of the piano as a handy means of giving outward expression to a conception wrought in the generalized language of tone.
- Sapir (1921), a pag.223