In place of science, the Eskimo has only magic to bridge the gap between what he can understand and what is not known. Without magic, his life would be one long panic.

The dictionary is a closed system in which someone interested in the meaning of a word can go around and around and end up exactly where he started, simply because words are defined in terms of other words, and these, in turn, are defined in terms of still other words.

A complex society is not necessarily more advanced than a simple one; it has just adapted to conditions in a more complicated way.

Letters to the editors of English and American newspapers often contain expressions of horror about the new terms that creep into the language, and these expressions are usually accompanied by dire predictions about ruination of the mother tongue.

Food to a large extent is what holds a society together, and eating is closely linked to deep spiritual experiences.

No child is capable of speech until he has heard other human beings speak, and even two infants reared together cannot develop a language from scratch.

An invention or new combination can be successful only if all if the elements necessary for the recombination are present in the culture.