Quote #7

Ordinary language blinkers the already feeble imagination. --Austin, Papers 68.

More from J. L. Austin

  1. Faced with the nonsense question 'What is the meaning of a word?' and perhaps dimly recognizing it to be nonsense, we are nevertheless not …
  2. [I]f we say that I only get at the symptoms of his anger, that carries an important implication. But is this the way we do talk? --Austin, …
  3. It may justly be urged that, properly speaking, what alone has meaning is a sentence. --Austin, Papers 56.
  4. But suppose we take the noun 'truth': here is a case where the disagreements between different theorists have largely turned on whether the…
  5. But surely, speaking carefully, we do not sense 'red' and 'blue' any more than 'resemblance' (or 'qualities' any more than 'relations'): we…
  6. We become obsessed with 'truth' when discussing statements, just as we become obsessed with 'freedom' when discussing conduct...Like freedo…
  7. In one sense 'there are' both universals and material objects, in another sense there is no such thing as either: statements about each can…
  8. 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 char…

All J. L. Austin quotes