[…] even the poorest language in existence is so much better than any one’s powers could have produced unaided, that its acquisition would imply a greatly accelerated drawing out and training of the powers of even the most gifted being […].
- Whitney (1875), a pag.22

[…] his [of child] power of noting resemblances and differences, the most fundamental activity of intellect, is from the first called into lively action and trained by the constant necessity of applying names rightly.
- Whitney (1875), a pag.27

[…] individuals of every degree of gift are found using, each according to his power, the same identical dialect; and souls of kindred calibre in different societies can hold no communion together.
- Whitney (1875), a pag.3-4

[…] the child is exercising his organs of utterance, and gaining conscious command of them, partly by a mere native impulse to the exertion of all his native powers, partly by imitation of the sound-making persons about him […].
- Whitney (1875), a pag.11

[…] the great and wonderful powers of the human soul would never move in this particular direction [language] but for the added push given by the desire of communication […].
- Whitney (1875), a pag.284-285

It belongs to the highest development of speech that the word written and read should have something like the same power as the word spoken and heard […].
- Whitney (1875), a pag.294

The human capacity to which the production of language is most directly due is [...] the power of intelligently, and not by blind instinct alone, adapting means to ends.
- Whitney (1875), a pag.303

The power of brain, the capacity of thought, is enhanced by speech […].
- Whitney (1875), a pag.306

Whether, among the powers that contribute to the production of language, there is one or more than one, not belonging in any degree to a single animal below man, is a point which must be left to the psychologist to decide […] A heightened power of comparison, of the general perception of resemblances and differences; an accompanying higher power of abstraction, or of viewing the resemblances and differences as attributes, characteristic of the objects compared; and, above all else, a heightened command of consciousness, a power of looking upon one’s self also as acting and feeling, of studying one’s own mental movements- these, it is believed, are the directions in which the decisive superiority is to be looked for.
- Whitney (1875), a pag.305