J. L. Austin famous quotes

Last updated: Sep 5, 2024

Usually it is uses of words, not words in themselves, that are properly called vague.
-- J. L. Austin

#Fake People #People #Fake
Why should it not be the whole function of a word to denote many things?
-- J. L. Austin

#Should #Function
In one sense 'there are' both universals and material objects, in another sense there is no such thing as either: statements about each can usually be analysed, but not always, nor always without remainder.
-- J. L. Austin

#Materials
Faced with the nonsense question 'What is the meaning of a word?' and perhaps dimly recognizing it to be nonsense, we are nevertheless not inclined to give it up.
-- J. L. Austin

#Giving #Nonsense #Recognizing
But suppose we take the noun 'truth': here is a case where the disagreements between different theorists have largely turned on whether they interpreted this as a name of a substance, of a quality, or of a relation.
-- J. L. Austin

#Names #Quality #Different
We become obsessed with 'truth' when discussing statements, just as we become obsessed with 'freedom' when discussing conduct...Like freedom, truth is a bare minimum or an illusory ideal.
-- J. L. Austin

#Truth Is #Obsessed #Minimum
Like 'real', 'free' is only used to rule out the suggestion of some or all of its recognized antitheses. As 'truth' is not a name of a characteristic of assertions, so 'freedom' is not a name for a characteristic of actions, but the name of a dimension in which actions are assessed.
-- J. L. Austin

#Real #Names #Suggestions
Words are not (except in their own little corner) facts or things: we need therefore to prise them off the world, to hold them apart from and against it, so that we can realize their inadequacies and arbitrariness, and can relook at the world without blinkers.
-- J. L. Austin

#Needs #World #Littles
However well equipped our language, it can never be forearmed against all possible cases that may arise and call for description: fact is richer than diction.
-- J. L. Austin

#Diction #May #Facts
Let us distinguish between acting intentionally and acting deliberately or on purpose, as far as this can be done by attending to what language can teach us.
-- J. L. Austin

#Acting #Purpose #Done
There are more ways of killing a cat than drowning it in butter; but this is the sort of thing (as the proverb indicates) we overlook: there are more ways of outraging speech than contradiction merely.
-- J. L. Austin

#Cat #Speech #Way
Going back into the history of a word, very often into Latin, we come back pretty commonly to pictures or models of how things happen or are done. These models may be fairly sophisticated and recent, as is perhaps the case with 'motive' or 'impulse', but one of the commonest and most primitive types of model is one which is apt to baffle us through its very naturalness and simplicity.
-- J. L. Austin

#Latin #Simplicity #Done
Sentences are not as such either true or false.
-- J. L. Austin

#Fake People #People #Fake
In the one defense, briefly, we accept responsibility but deny that it was bad: in the other, we admit that it was bad but don't accept full, or even any, responsibility.
-- J. L. Austin

#Responsibility #Reality #Defense
After all we speak of people 'taking refuge' in vagueness -the more precise you are, in general the more likely you are to be wrong, whereas you stand a good chance of not being wrong if you make it vague enough.
-- J. L. Austin

#People #Vagueness #Chance
Certainly ordinary language has no claim to be the last word, if there is such a thing.
-- J. L. Austin

#Ordinary #Lasts #Language
But I owe it to the subject to say, that it has long afforded me what philosophy is so often thought, and made, barren of - the fun of discovery, the pleasures of co-operation, and the satisfaction of reaching agreement.
-- J. L. Austin

#Fun #Philosophy #Discovery
Fact is richer than diction.
-- J. L. Austin

#Diction #Facts
Going back into the history of a word, very often into Latin, we come back pretty commonly to pictures or models of how things happen or are done.
-- J. L. Austin

#Latin #Done #Models
Infelicity is an ill to which all acts are heir which have the general character of ritual or ceremonial, all conventional acts.
-- J. L. Austin

#Character #Heirs #Ill
There are more ways of outraging speech than contradiction merely.
-- J. L. Austin

#Speech #Way #Contradiction
But surely, speaking carefully, we do not sense 'red' and 'blue' any more than 'resemblance' (or 'qualities' any more than 'relations'): we sense something of which we might say, if we wished to talk about it, that 'this is red.
-- J. L. Austin

#Blue #Quality #Might

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