#Quote
More Quotes by 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.
The critical principle demanded an examination, for instance, of the contribution of different periods, thus to some extent embarking on historical linguistics.
A language presupposes that all the individual users possess the organs.
Without language, thought is a vague, uncharted nebula.
A linguistic system is a series of differences of sound combined with a series of differences of ideas.
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, the study of inscriptions and their language. But not yet in the spirit of linguistics.
Speech has both an individual and a social side, and we cannot conceive of one without the other.
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 fail to wonder what exactly these connections showed, and how they should be interpreted in concrete terms.
Written forms obscure our view of language. They are not so much a garment as a disguise.
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.
