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

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

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.

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

It is one of the aims of linguistics to define itself, to recognise what belongs within its domain. In those cases where it relies upon psychology, it will do so indirectly, remaining independent.

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.

Any psychology of sign systems will be part of social psychology - that is to say, will be exclusively social; it will involve the same psychology as is applicable in the case of languages.