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

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.

The connection between the signifier and the signified is arbitrary.

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.

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

Linguistics will have to recognise laws operating universally in language, and in a strictly rational manner, separating general phenomena from those restricted to one branch of languages or another.

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.

Without language, thought is a vague, uncharted nebula.

Time changes all things; there is no reason why language should escape this universal law

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

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

Some men are more easily broken by kindness than censure.

Parkinson's is a slow but inevitable process. It's hard living with it on a daily basis. The difficulty facing people with it is that they never quite know 'Can I or can't I do this today?'

Nowhere but in France are people so strictly observant of great matters and so disdainfully indulgent about small ones.

Ecclesiastical establishments tend to great ignorance and corruption

Why, this Satan’s drink is so delicious it would be a pity to let the infidels have exclusive use of it. We shall fool Satan by baptizing it and making it a truly Christian beverage.

You dropped this," he said, totally poker-faced.

When you're a little kid, growing up, most of us know what's right and wrong. Our parents teach us that discipline.

I was raised in a climate where I believed in God because I was afraid of going to hell - and I didn't think that was the right way to fall in love with somebody.

Body armor. Four thousand pounds of body armor. And missile-proof glass? Nice. What had happened to good old-fashioned bulletproof?

Men who watch, and say little, very often are much wiser than the men they serve.