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The worlds in which different societies live are distinct worlds, not merely the same world with different labels attached … 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 The Status Of Linguistics As A Science (1929)

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More quotes by Edward Sapir

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

Cultural Anthropology and Psychiatry (1932)

Fashion is custom in the guise of departure from custom.

Fashion (1931)

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

Language (1921)

It would be naïve to imagine that any analysis of experience is dependent on pattern expressed in language.

Getting down to brass tacks, how in the Hell are you going to explain general American n- 'I' except genetically?

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Quote text and notes from Wikiquote: Edward Sapir (page history), available under CC BY-SA 4.0. Source quality and labels are our own summary of what Wikiquote records.