[…] by external forces, every act and influence of which is clearly definable, the cultivated languages have been and are extending their sway, crowding out of existence the ‘patois’ which had grown up under the old order of things, gaining such advantage that men are beginning to dream of a time when one language may be spoken all over the earth.
- Whitney (1875), a pag.176-177

[…] each individual feels, in the main, the governing force of the same motives which sway the minds of his fellows. He does not himself incline, any more than they would incline to allow him, to abandon the established habits of speech and go off upon a tangent, toward some new and strange mode of expression.
- Whitney (1875), a pag.150

A written literature, the habit of recording and reading, the prevalence of actual instruction, work yet more powerfully in the same direction [conservative]; and when such forces have reached the degree of strength which they show in our modern enlightened communities, they fairly dominate the history of speech.
- Whitney (1875), a pag.158

No uncultured people ever spends consciously any time or effort upon its speech: this cannot be thought over and worked up into better shape; it must come by the way, as incident to the work of thought, as result of unreflective effort at communication. That race which possesses most of the right kind of regulative force will turn out a product that is admirable, and the contrary.
- Whitney (1875), a pag.224