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

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

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

Language furnishes the best proof that a law accepted by a community is a thing that is tolerated and not a rule to which all freely consent.

Life is not about chances, thinkings or probabilities, life is about atitudes

You need one person who knows you... Just one person you can't fool, even when you fool yourself.

I think the people of Florida are fed up. I don't think Marco Rubio can - I mean, I may be wrong, but I don't think he can be elected dogcatcher in Florida.

The wild bird that flies so lone and far has somewhere its nest and brood. A little fluttering heart of love impels its wings, and points its course. There is nothing so solitary as a solitary man.

Think and then act. Never act and then alibi.

The talked-about is always the last to hear the talk . . .

A really good day for me is to write my book for about four hours, go to the writing room for about four hours and then maybe come back to the book to finish the day for a few more hours of it.

As time goes on, all schools only get left alive if they have found something special themselves.

There's an alarm bell that goes off in my head if I can sense that I'm making a mistake.

My mother made a brilliant impression upon my childhood life. She shone for me like the evening star.