Ferdinand de Saussure Quotes

Language is our way of communicating what we want and who we are.

The development of language is part of the development of the personality, for words are the natural means of expressing thoughts and establishing understanding between people.

Language. By this we build pyramids, fight battles, ordain and administer laws, shape and teach religion, and knit man to man, cultivate each other, and ourselves.

For me, language is something that I've always loved. When I read, that's what I look for. When I write, that's what I strive for.

We must plow through the whole of language.

...language is not the frosting, it's the cake.

Language is, without a doubt, the most momentous and at the same time the most mysterious product of the human mind.

Only one thing remained reachable, close and secure amid all losses: language. Yes, language. In spite of everything, it remained secure against loss.

I hardly ever talk- words seem such a waste, and they are none of them true. No one has yet invented a language from my point of view.

LANGUAGE, n. The music with which we charm the serpents guarding another's treasure.

We have only the language for fun and miserable, and maybe we need language for deep and shallow, meaningful and meaningless.

Language is a form of organized stutter.

I do not pretend that language is science. It isan instrument for the attainment of science.

Language has no independent existence apart from the people who use it. It is not an end in itself; it is a means to an end of understanding who you are and what society is like.

A language is a more ancient and inevitable thing than any state.

You couldn't have human society without language.

Understanding is nothing else than conception caused by speech.

I see people in terms of dialogue and I believe that people are their talk.

Language is possible due to a number of cognitive and physical characteristics that are unique to humans but none of which that are unique to language. Coming together they make language possible. But the fundamental building block of language is community.

Language comes first. It's not that language grows out of consciousness, if you haven't got language, you can't be conscious.

Civilization began the first time an angry person cast a word instead of a rock.

Language is a social art.

Humans are a social species more than any other, and in order to build a community, which for some reason humans have to do in order to live, we have to solve the communication problem. Language is the tool that was invented to solve that problem.

Language is a part of our organism and no less complicated than it.

I'm a linguist. I study how people talk to each other and how the ways we talk affect our relationships.