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

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

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

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

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.

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.

The connection between the signifier and the signified is arbitrary.