Languages differ essentially in what they must convey and not in what they may convey.

Semantics, or the study of meaning, remained undeveloped, while phonetics made rapid progress and even came to occupy the central place in the scientific study of language.

Linguistic sounds, considered as external, physical phenomena have two aspects, the motor and the acoustic.

Every linguistic sign is located on two axes: the axis of simultaneity and that of succession.

Now the identification of individual sounds by phonetic observation is an artificial way of proceeding.

What's next? Shall we appoint elephants to teach zoology?

Bilingualism is for me the fundamental problem of linguistics.

The function of poetry is to point out that the sign is not identical to the referent.

When I speak it is in order to be heard.

A new era in the physiological investigation of linguistic sounds was opened up by X-ray photography.

In poetic language, in which the sign as such takes on an autonomous value, this sound symbolism becomes an actual factor and creates a sort of accompaniment to the signified.

There is no failure, unless we fail to begin or we fail to continue.

Warren was nearly hoarse as he wiped the tears from his eyes and face. "I need to change. I need to protect my family. I need to earn who I am.

Facing a language you don't know is like returning to your infancy when your mother tongue used to be a foreign language to you

Do not let any question goes out of your mind without doing something about it.

One man may be more cunning than another, but no one can be more cunning than all the world.

When we have money, we start making mistakes.

To benefit by others' killing and to delude oneself into the belief that one is being very religions and nonviolent is sheer self-deception.

Because hypocrisy stinks in the nostrils one is likely to rate it as a more powerful agent for destruction than it is.

Most of us want to have enough... good works to get into heaven, but enough bad works to be fun.

Books are savaged and careers destroyed by surly snots who write anonymous reviews and publishers can't be bothered to protest this institutionalized corruption.