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.

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

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

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

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

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.

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