« All Language Quotes · Ferdinand de Saussure's Page
Language Quotes by 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 to which all…
- Of all social institutions language is least amenable to initiative. It blends with the life of society, and the latter, inert by nature, is a…
- Written forms obscure our view of language. They are not so much a garment as a disguise.
- In the lives of individuals and societies, language is a factor of greater importance than any other. For the study of language to remain solely…
- Time changes all things; there is no reason why language should escape this universal law
- Any psychology of sign systems will be part of social psychology - that is to say, will be exclusively social; it will involve the same…
- Henceforth, language studies were no longer directed merely towards correcting grammar.
- In fact, from then on scholars engaged in a kind of game of comparing different Indo-European languages with one another, and eventually they could not…
- Everyone, left to his own devices, forms an idea about what goes on in language which is very far from the truth.
- In general, the philological movement opened up countless sources relevant to linguistic issues, treating them in quite a different spirit from traditional grammar; for instance,…
- It is useful to the historian, among others, to be able to see the commonest forms of different phenomena, whether phonetic, morphological or other, and…
- Linguistics will have to recognise laws operating universally in language, and in a strictly rational manner, separating general phenomena from those restricted to one branch…
- The business, task or object of the scientific study of languages will if possible be 1) to trace the history of all known languages. Naturally…
- The very special place that a language occupies among institutions is undeniable, but there is much more to be said-, a comparison would tend rather…
- The first of these phases is that of grammar, invented by the Greeks and carried on unchanged by the French. It never had any philosophical…
- A language presupposes that all the individual users possess the organs.
- Without language, thought is a vague, uncharted nebula.
- Whitney wanted to eradicate the idea that in the case of a language we are dealing with a natural faculty; in fact, social institutions stand…
More Language Quotes
- Only the mob and the elite can be attracted by the momentum of totalitarianism itself. The masses have to be won by… — Hannah Arendt
- High thoughts must have high language. — Aristophanes
- In making a speech one must study three points: first, the means of producing persuasion; second, the language; third the proper arrangement… — Aristotle
- But I liked Yeats! That wild Irishman. I really loved his love of language, his flow. His chaotic ideas seemed to me… — Chinua Achebe
- War is what happens when language fails. — Margaret Atwood
- As soon as you have a language that has a past tense and a future tense you're going to say, 'Where did… — Margaret Atwood
- A poet is, before anything else, a person who is passionately in love with language. — Wystan Hugh Auden
- A poem records emotions and moods that lie beyond normal language, that can only be patched together and hinted at metaphorically. — Diane Ackerman
- The finest command of language is often shown by saying nothing. — Roger Babson
- A special kind of beauty exists which is born in language, of language, and for language. — Gaston Bachelard
- In any area of the U.N. we... have to agree on certain language that can represent the same spirit, but that can… — Michelle Bachelet
- An inability to stay quiet is one of the conspicuous failings of mankind. — Walter Bagehot