Ferdinand de Saussure Language Quotations

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.

Henceforth, language studies were no longer directed merely towards correcting grammar.

Everyone, left to his own devices, forms an idea about what goes on in language which is very far from the truth.

Any psychology of sign systems will be part of social psychology - that is to say, will be exclusively social; it will involve the same psychology as is applicable in the case of languages.

The very special place that a language occupies among institutions is undeniable, but there is much more to be said-, a comparison would tend rather to bring out the differences.

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.

A language presupposes that all the individual users possess the organs.

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.

Before Latin, there is a period which Greek and Slavic share in common. So this involves the history of language families, as and when relevant.

In attempting to trace the history of a language, one will very soon find oneself obliged to trace the history of a language family.

Of all social institutions language is least amenable to initiative. It blends with the life of society, and the latter, inert by nature, is a prime conservative force.

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.

Without language, thought is a vague, uncharted nebula.

Written forms obscure our view of language. They are not so much a garment as a disguise.

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