#Quote
More Quotes by Ferdinand de Saussure
A linguistic system is a series of differences of sound combined with a series of differences of ideas.
The ultimate law of language is, dare we say, that nothing can ever reside in a single term. This is a direct consequence of the fact that linguistic signs are unrelated to what they designate and that, therefore, 'a' cannot designate anything without the the aid of 'b' and vice versa, or, in other words, that both have value only by the difference between them.
Time changes all things; there is no reason why language should escape this universal law.
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.
Henceforth, language studies were no longer directed merely towards correcting grammar.
Without language, thought is a vague, uncharted nebula.
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.
Everyone, left to his own devices, forms an idea about what goes on in language which is very far from the truth.
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 of languages or another.
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 the business of a handful of specialists would be a quite unacceptable state of affairs.
