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.”

— Ferdinand De Saussure

“Without language, thought is a vague, uncharted nebula.”

— Ferdinand De Saussure

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

— Ferdinand De Saussure

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

— Ferdinand De Saussure

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

— Ferdinand De Saussure

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

— Ferdinand De Saussure

“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.”

— Ferdinand De Saussure

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

— 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.”

— Ferdinand De Saussure

The critical principle demanded an examination, for instance, of the contribution of different periods, thus to some extent embarking on historical linguistics.

— Ferdinand De Saussure

“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.”

— Ferdinand De Saussure

Within speech, words are subject to a kind of relation that is independent of the first and based on their linkage: these are syntagmatic relations, of which I have spoken.

— Ferdinand De Saussure

“Whitney wanted to eradicate the idea that in the case of a language we are dealing with a natural faculty; in fact, social institutions stand opposed to natural institutions.”

— Ferdinand De Saussure

“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.”

— Ferdinand De Saussure

“Nearly all institutions, it might be said, are based on signs, but these signs do not directly evoke things.”

— Ferdinand De Saussure

“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.”

— Ferdinand De Saussure

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

— Ferdinand De Saussure

“It is only since linguistics has become more aware of its object of study, i.e. perceives the whole extent of it, that it is evident that this science can make a contribution to a range of studies that will be of interest to almost anyone.”

— Ferdinand De Saussure

“Outside speech, the association that is made in the memory between words having something in common creates different groups, series, families, within which very diverse relations obtain but belonging to a single category: these are associative relations.”

— Ferdinand De Saussure

“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.”

— Ferdinand De Saussure

The first of these phases is that of grammar, invented by the Greeks and carried on unchanged by the French. It never had any philosophical view of a language as such.

— Ferdinand De Saussure

“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.”

— Ferdinand De Saussure

“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.”

— Ferdinand De Saussure

“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.”

— Ferdinand De Saussure

“The connection between the signifier and the signified is arbitrary.”

— Ferdinand De Saussure

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

— Ferdinand De Saussure

“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.”

— Ferdinand De Saussure

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.

— Ferdinand De Saussure

“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.”

— Ferdinand De Saussure

“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.”

— Ferdinand De Saussure