Top 35 Edward Sapir Quotes (2025 Update)

1. “Nonverbal communication is an elaborate secret code that is written nowhere, known by none, and understood by all.”

— Edward Sapir

Featured in: Communication Quotes

2. “Language is an anonymous, collective and unconscious art; the result of the creativity of thousands of generations.”

— Edward Sapir

3. “Language is the most massive and inclusive art we know, a mountainous and anonymous work of unconscious generations.”

— Edward Sapir

4. “The fact of the matter is that the ‘real world’ is to a large extent unconsciously built up on the language habits of the group.”

— Edward Sapir

5. “Language is a purely human and non-instinctive method of communicating ideas, emotions, and desires by means of a system of voluntarily produced symbols.”

— Edward Sapir

6. “Were a language ever completely “grammatical” it would be a perfect engine of conceptual expression. Unfortunately, or luckily, no language is tyrannically consistent. All grammars leak.”

— Edward Sapir

7. “We see and hear and otherwise experience very largely as we do because the language habits of our community predispose certain choices of interpretation.”

— Edward Sapir

8. “A firm, for instance, that does business in many countries of the world is driven to spend an enormous amount of time, labour, and money in providing for translation services.”

— Edward Sapir

9. “No two languages are ever sufficiently similar to be considered as representing the same social reality.”

— Edward Sapir

10. “Cultural anthropology is not valuable because it uncovers the archaic in the psychological sense. It is valuable because it is constantly rediscovering the normal.”

— Edward Sapir

11. “In a sense, every form of expression is imposed upon one by social factors, one’s own language above all.”

— Edward Sapir

12. “Cultural anthropology is more and more rapidly getting to realize itself as a strictly historical science.”

— Edward Sapir

13. “A standard international language should not only be simple, regular, and logical, but also rich and creative.”

— Edward Sapir

14. “One of the glories of English simplicity is the possibility of using the same word as noun and verb.”

— Edward Sapir

15. “English, once accepted as an international language, is no more secure than French has proved to be as the one and only accepted language of diplomacy or as Latin has proved to be as the international language of science.”

— Edward Sapir

16. “What fetters the mind and benumbs the spirit is ever the dogged acceptance of absolutes.”

— Edward Sapir

17. “The psychology of a language which, in one way or another, is imposed upon one because of factors beyond one’s control, is very different from the psychology of a language which one accepts of one’s free will.”

— Edward Sapir

18. “It is quite an illusion to imagine that one adjusts to reality essentially without the use of language and that language is merely an incidental means of solving specific problems of communication or reflection.”

— Edward Sapir

19. “Human beings do not live in the objective world alone, nor alone in the world of social activity as ordinarily understood, but are very much at the mercy of the particular language which has become the medium of expression for their society.”

— Edward Sapir

20. “Fashion is custom in the guise of departure from custom.”

— Edward Sapir

21. “These examples of the lack of simplicity in English and French, all appearances to the contrary, could be multiplied almost without limit and apply to all national languages.”

— Edward Sapir

22. “It would, of course, be hopeless to attempt to crowd into an international language all those local overtones of meaning which are so dear to the heart of the nationalist.”

— Edward Sapir

23. “More and more, unsolicited gifts from without are likely to be received with unconscious resentment.”

— Edward Sapir

24. “No important national language, at least in the Occidental world, has complete regularity of grammatical structure, nor is there a single logical category which is adequately and consistently handled in terms of linguistic symbolism.”

— Edward Sapir

25. “It is no secret that the fruits of language study are in no sort of relation to the labour spent on teaching and learning them.”

— Edward Sapir

26. “Human beings do not wish to be modest; they want to be as expressive – that is, as immodest – as fear allows; fashion helps them solve that paradoxical problem.”

— Edward Sapir

27. “Impatience translates itself into a desire to have something immediate done about it all, and, as is generally the case with impatience, resolves itself in the easiest way that lies ready to hand.”

— Edward Sapir

28. “I am convinced that the stratigraphic method will in the future enable archaeology to throw far more light on the history of American culture than it has done in the past.”

— Edward Sapir

29. “National languages are all huge systems of vested interests which sullenly resist critical inquiry.”

— Edward Sapir

30. “The attitude of independence toward a constructed language which all national speakers must adopt is really a great advantage, because it tends to make man see himself as the master of language instead of its obedient servant.”

— Edward Sapir

31. “A second type of direct evidence is formed by statements, whether as formal legends or personal information, regarding the age or relative sequence of events in tribal history made by the natives themselves.”

— Edward Sapir

32. “A common allegiance to form of expression that is identified with no single national unit is likely to prove one of the most potent symbols of the freedom of the human spirit that the world has yet known.”

— Edward Sapir

33. “Comparison of statements made at different periods frequently enable us to give maximal and minimal dates to the appearance of a cultural element or to assign the time limits to a movement of population.”

— Edward Sapir

34. “A logical analysis of reflexive usages in French shows, however, that this simplicity is an illusion and that, so far from helping the foreigner, it is more calculated to bother him.”

— Edward Sapir

35. “So far as the advocates of a constructed international language are concerned, it is rather to be wondered at how much in common their proposals actually have, both in vocabulary and in general spirit of procedure.”

— Edward Sapir

36. “The spirit of logical analysis should in practice blend with the practical pressure for the adoption of some form of international language, but it should not allow itself to be stampeded by it.”

— Edward Sapir

37. “Both French and Latin are involved with nationalistic and religious implications which could not be entirely shaken off, and so, while they seemed for a long time to have solved the international language problem up to a certain point, they did not really do so in spirit.”

— Edward Sapir

38. “A common creation demands a common sacrifice, and perhaps not the least potent argument in favour of a constructed international language is the fact that it is equally foreign, or apparently so, to the traditions of all nationalities.”

— Edward Sapir

39. “As a matter of fact, a national language which spreads beyond its own confines very quickly loses much of its original richness of content and is in no better case than a constructed language.”

— Edward Sapir