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.

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

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.

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

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

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.

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