Ferdinand de Saussure

Nearly all institutions, it might be said, are based on signs, but these signs do not directly evoke things.

— Ferdinand de Saussure

In general, the philological movement opened up countless sources relevant to linguistic issues, treating them in quite a different spirit from traditional…

— Ferdinand de Saussure

The ultimate law of language is, dare we say, that nothing can ever reside in a single term. This is a direct…

— Ferdinand de Saussure

It is useful to the historian, among others, to be able to see the commonest forms of different phenomena, whether phonetic, morphological…

— Ferdinand de Saussure

It is only since linguistics has become more aware of its object of study, i.e. perceives the whole extent of it, that…

— Ferdinand de Saussure

A language presupposes that all the individual users possess the organs.

— Ferdinand de Saussure

Of all social institutions language is least amenable to initiative. It blends with the life of society, and the latter, inert by…

— Ferdinand de Saussure

The business, task or object of the scientific study of languages will if possible be 1) to trace the history of all…

— Ferdinand de Saussure

The first of these phases is that of grammar, invented by the Greeks and carried on unchanged by the French. It never…

— Ferdinand de Saussure

Written forms obscure our view of language. They are not so much a garment as a disguise.

— Ferdinand de Saussure

Everyone, left to his own devices, forms an idea about what goes on in language which is very far from the truth.

— Ferdinand de Saussure

Time changes all things; there is no reason why language should escape this universal law

— Ferdinand de Saussure

Linguistics will have to recognise laws operating universally in language, and in a strictly rational manner, separating general phenomena from those restricted…

— Ferdinand de Saussure

Without language, thought is a vague, uncharted nebula.

— Ferdinand de Saussure

I’m almost never serious, and I’m always too serious. Too deep, too shallow. Too sensitive, too cold hearted. I’m like a collection…

— Ferdinand de Saussure

A linguistic system is a series of differences of sound combined with a series of differences of ideas.

— Ferdinand de Saussure

Whitney wanted to eradicate the idea that in the case of a language we are dealing with a natural faculty; in fact,…

— Ferdinand de Saussure

Language furnishes the best proof that a law accepted by a community is a thing that is tolerated and not a rule…

— Ferdinand de Saussure

The critical principle demanded an examination, for instance, of the contribution of different periods, thus to some extent embarking on historical linguistics.

— Ferdinand de Saussure

Any psychology of sign systems will be part of social psychology - that is to say, will be exclusively social; it will…

— Ferdinand de Saussure

In fact, from then on scholars engaged in a kind of game of comparing different Indo-European languages with one another, and eventually…

— Ferdinand de Saussure

The very special place that a language occupies among institutions is undeniable, but there is much more to be said-, a comparison…

— Ferdinand de Saussure

Outside speech, the association that is made in the memory between words having something in common creates different groups, series, families, within…

— Ferdinand de Saussure

In the lives of individuals and societies, language is a factor of greater importance than any other. For the study of language…

— Ferdinand de Saussure

Within speech, words are subject to a kind of relation that is independent of the first and based on their linkage: these…

— Ferdinand de Saussure