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.

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

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

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

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.

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.

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.