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… — J. L. Austin Copy Share Image
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… — J. L. Austin Copy Share Image
Usually it is uses of words, not words in themselves, that are properly called vague. — J. L. Austin Copy Share Image
In the one defense, briefly, we accept responsibility but deny that it was bad: in the other, we admit that it was bad but… — J. L. Austin Copy Share Image
Are cans constitutionally iffy? Whenever, that is, we say that we can do something, or could do something, or could have done something, is… — J. L. Austin Copy Share Image
The trouble is that the expression 'material thing' is functioning already, from the very beginning, simply as a foil for 'sense-datum'; it is not here given, and is never given, any other role to play, and apart from this consideration it would surely never have occurred to anybody to try to represent as some single kind of things the things… — J. L. Austin Copy Share
The beginning of sense, not to say wisdom, is to realize that 'doing an action,' as used in philosophy, is a highly abstract expression--it… — J. L. Austin Copy Share Image
Is it true or false that Belfast is north of London? That the galaxy is the shape of a fried egg? That Beethoven was a drunkard? That Wellington won the battle of Waterloo? There are various degrees and dimensions of success in making statements: the statements fit the facts always more or less loosely, in different ways on different occasions… — J. L. Austin Copy Share
Certainly ordinary language has no claim to be the last word, if there is such a thing. It embodies, indeed, something better than the… — J. L. Austin Copy Share Image
Our common stock of words embodies all the distinctions men have found worth drawing, and the connexions they have found worth marketing, in the lifetimes of many generation; these surely are likely to be more numerous, more sound, since they have stood up to the long test of thee survival of the fittest, and more subtle, at least in all… — J. L. Austin Copy Share
It should be quite clear, then, that there are no criteria to be laid down in general for distinguishing the real from the not… — J. L. Austin Copy Share Image
In one sense 'there are' both universals and material objects, in another sense there is no such thing as either: statements about each can… — J. L. Austin Copy Share Image
