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, Course in General Linguistics

“Psychologically our thought-apart from its expression in words-is only a shapeless and indistinct mass.”
― Ferdinand de Saussure, Course in General Linguistics

“Time changes all things; there is no reason why language should escape this universal law”
― Ferdinand de Saussure, Course in General Linguistics

“Speech has both an individual and a social side, and we cannot conceive of one without the other.”
― Ferdinand de Saussure, Course in General Linguistics

“A linguistic system is a series of differences of sound combined with a series of differences of ideas.”
― Ferdinand de Saussure

“Las costumbres de una nación tienen repercusión en su lengua y, a su vez, la lengua es la que en gran medida hace a la nación.”
― Ferdinand de Saussure

“For the study of language to remain solely the business of a handful of specialists would be a quite unacceptable state of affairs. In practice, the study of language is in some degree or other the concern of everyone. But a paradoxical consequence of this general interest is that no other subject has fostered more absurd notions, more prejudices, more illusions, or more fantasies. From a psychological point of view, these errors are of interest in themselves. But it is the primary task of the linguist to denounce them, and to eradicate them as completely as possible.”
― Ferdinand de Saussure, Course in General Linguistics

“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