[...] motor processes and the accompanying motor feelings are [...] merely a means and a control leading to auditory perception in both speaker and hearer.
- Sapir (1921), Pag. 17

[...] underlying the finished sentence is a living sentence type [...]. These fixed types [...] may be freely overlaid by such additional matter as the speaker or writer cares to put on [...]
- Sapir (1921), Pag. 37

[...] experiences with naïve speakers and recorders do more to convince one of the definitely plastic unity of the word than any amount of purely theoretical argument.
- Sapir (1921), Pag. 34

[...] socially accepted feeling-tones, [...] rarely have the rigidity of the central, primary fact. We all grant [...] that 'storm', 'tempest', and 'hurricane', quite aside from their slight differences of actual meaning, have distinct feeling-tones [...] that are felt by all sensitive speakers [...]
- Sapir (1921), Pag. 40

The feeling that the average speaker has of his language is that it is built up, [...] of a [...] small number of distinct sounds [...] the number of clearly distinguishable sounds [...] that are habitually employed by the speakers [...] is far greater than they themselves recognize.
- Sapir (1921), Pag. 42

Back of the purely objective system of sounds that is peculiar to a language [...] there is a more restricted 'inner' [...] system which, while perhaps equally unconscious as a system to the naïve speaker, can far more readily than the other be brought to his consciousness as a finished pattern, a psychological mechanism.
- Sapir (1921), Pag. 55