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

- Ferdinand De Saussure

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

- Ferdinand De Saussure

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

- 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

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 …

- Ferdinand De Saussure

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

- Ferdinand De Saussure

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

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

- 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