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.

Gestures and facial expressions do indeed communicate, as anyone can prove by turning off the sound on a television set and asking watchers to characterize the speakers from the picture alone.

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

At every moment of his life the Shoshone must be careful to observe the complicated folkways of his group, to do reverence to superhuman powers, to remember the courtesies and obligations of family, to pay homage to certain sacred plants, or to avoid particular places.

Language does not stand still. Surprisingly, despite this knowledge, most speakers are fearful of change.

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.