Kenneth Lee Pike Quotes

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.

The marvelous thing is that even in studying linguistics, we find that the universe as a whole is patterned, ordered, and to some degree intelligible to us.

When I conform to truth, I do not conform to an abstract principle; I conform to the nature of God.

Normal social behavior requires that we be able to recognize identities in spite of change. Unless we can do so, there can be no human society as we know it.

There is no truth without responsibility following in its wake.

Acceptance of the power of God in one's life lays the groundwork for personal commitment to both science and Christianity, which so often have been in conflict.

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

The view of the local scene through the eyes of a native participant in that scene is a different window.

If I were to adopt pure mechanism as a philosophy, there would be no way I could choose to be a scholar.

Only when we have enough mental stress to force us to see our own bankruptcy of power, do we trust in God, and only when we trust in God can we make a contribution which will not collapse.

Language is a tool adequate to provide any degree of precision relevant to a particular situation.

Identity in the form of continuity of personality is an extremely important characteristic of the individual.

I wanted a theory that would allow one to live outside the office with the same philosophy one uses inside it.

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.

Courage to continue comes from deeper sources than outward results.

Verbal and nonverbal activity is a unified whole, and theory and methodology should be organized or created to treat it as such.

Nobody is as good as he thinks he is.

Outward failure may be a manifested variant of inward success.

God cannot be reduced to a sample for analysis.

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

It is also, I would guess, a universal that in all societies people value respectability granted to them.

The deepest sins are camouflaged as holiness.

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

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