Kenneth L. Pike

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

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

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.

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.

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

If the scholar feels that he must know everything about any topic, he is in trouble - and will not publish with a clear conscience.

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

Christianity stands or falls as a living program, a way of life, made concrete in the life of man by the life of God through the life of the concretely living Christ.

Courage to continue comes from deeper sources than outward results.

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

So I see that Christianity in believing in a Creator pulls together more facts, data, inner experience and ability than any mechanistic view could hold for me.