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.

The business, task or object of the scientific study of languages will if possible be 1) to trace the history of all known languages. Naturally this is possible only to a very limited extent and for very few languages.

Henceforth, language studies were no longer directed merely towards correcting grammar.

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.

The first of these phases is that of grammar, invented by the Greeks and carried on unchanged by the French. It never had any philosophical view of a language as such.

The connection between the signifier and the signified is arbitrary.