Ferdinand de Saussure Quotes

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 of paradoxes.

Without language, thought is a vague, uncharted nebula.

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

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

Speech has both an individual and a social side, and we cannot conceive of one without the other.

Psychologically our thought-apart from its expression in words-is only a shapeless and indistinct mass.

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 freely consent.