Arbitrary Quote by Ferdinand de Saussure

Language is a signifier - it points to something. But those somethings change sometimes. Where the line comes down is that change is not…

— Kory Stamper

Contemporary poetry ... tries to transform the sign back into meaning: its ideal, ultimately, would be to reach not the meaning of words, but…

— Roland Barthes

“The fateful law of human semiotics is this: that of all the objects in the entire Cosmos which the sign-user can apprehend through the…

— Walker Percy

Meaning is produced not only by the relationship between the signifier and the signified but also, crucially, by the position of the signifiers in…

— Jacques Lacan

“We will never ask what a book means, as signified or signifier; we will not look for anything to understand i n i t…

— Anonymous

For the signifier is a unit in its very uniqueness, being by nature symbol only of an absence.

— Jacques Lacan

Why do comparisons of words and tone poems (poetry and music) never take into consideration that the word is a mere signifier, but that…

— Franz Grillparzer

Police in China can do whatever they want; after 81 days in arbitrary detention you clearly realise that they don't have to obey their…

— Ai Weiwei

I look back, now, and I know that the naming moment, which seemed so insignificant then, which seemed to demand no more than an…

— Gregory David Roberts

Habit is altogether too arbitrary a master for me to submit to.

— Johann Kaspar Lavater

I don't concern myself with thinking ahead to the finished product. I focus more specifically on what the character is experiencing. Once you relieve…

— Jesse Eisenberg

Not to be offensive, not to be capricious, not to be arbitrary, not to be neurotic, not to be an actor outer, you're just…

— William Hurt