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.

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.

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.

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

The connection between the signifier and the signified is arbitrary.

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.

Without language, thought is a vague, uncharted nebula.