Kenneth L. Pike Quotes & Sayings

“If language did not affect behavior, it could have no meaning.”

“Language is not merely a set of unrelated sounds, clauses, rules, and meanings; it is a total coherent system of these integrating with each other, and with behavior, context, universe of discourse, and observer perspective.”

“The price that one pays for refusing to act on the truth as one sees it, is to be led to believe untruth to avoid guilt.”

“Today's practicality is often no more than the accepted form of yesterday's theory.”

“With acknowledgement of residues, we can be more easily prepared to grant the unit of science, the overlapping of disciplines, and the total coherence of all facts.”

“The detached observer's view is one window on the world.”

“Fruitful discourse in science or theology requires us to believe that within the contexts of normal discourse there are some true statements.”

“Without a possibility of change in meanings human communication could not perform its present functions.”

“That a society controls, to a greater or lesser extent, the behavior of its members is a universal; but the methods, the particulars of that control, vary from one culture to another.”

“The universe extends beyond the mind of man, and is more complex than the small sample one can study.”