#Quote
More Quotes by Ferdinand de Saussure
Written forms obscure our view of language. They are not so much a garment as a disguise.
Everyone, left to his own devices, forms an idea about what goes on in language which is very far from the truth.
It is one of the aims of linguistics to define itself, to recognise what belongs within its domain. In those cases where it relies upon psychology, it will do so indirectly, remaining independent.
Psychologically our thought-apart from its expression in words-is only a shapeless and indistinct mass.
Time changes all things; there is no reason why language should escape this universal law.
A language presupposes that all the individual users possess the organs.
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 how language lives, carries on and changes over time.
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.
Speech has both an individual and a social side, and we cannot conceive of one without the other.
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 this is possible only to a very limited extent and for very few languages.
