The critical principle demanded an examination, for instance, of the contribution of different periods, thus to some extent embarking on historical linguistics.

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

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.

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.

Speech has both an individual and a social side, and we cannot conceive of one without the other.

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.

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.