J. L. Austin Quotes

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• Usually it is uses of words, not words in themselves, that are properly called vague.

  J. L. Austin

  Fake People, Use, Vague

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• A sentence is made up of words, a statement is made in words.... Statements are made, words or sentences are used.

  J. L. Austin

  Language, Used, Made

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• 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

  World, Littles, Facts

  "Philosophical Papers". Book by J. L. Austin, edited by James Opie Urmson, Geoffrey James Warnock, p. 182, 1979.

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• 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

  "Philosophical Papers". Book by J. L. Austin, edited by James Opie Urmson, Geoffrey James Warnock, p. 195, 1979.

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• 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

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• 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, Austin, Purpose

  "Philosophical Papers" by J. L. Austin, James Opie Urmson, Geoffrey James Warnock, 3rd ed., New York: Oxford, (p. 273), 1979.

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• 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 ordinary and reasonably practical matters, than any that you or I are likely to think up in our arm-chairs of an afternoon-the most favoured alternative method.

  J. L. Austin

  Men, Thinking, Drawing

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• Fact is richer than diction.

  J. L. Austin

  Diction, Facts

  "Philosophical Papers" by J. L. Austin, James Opie Urmson, Geoffrey James Warnock, 3rd ed., New York: Oxford, (p. 195), 1979.

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• Certainly ordinary language has no claim to be the last word, if there is such a thing.

  J. L. Austin

  Ordinary, Lasts, Language

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• 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

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• Next, 'real' is what we may call a trouser-word. It is usually thought, and I dare say usually rightly thought, that what one might call the affirmative use of a term is basic--that, to understand 'x,' we need to know what it is to be x, or to be an x, and that knowing this apprises us of what it is not to be x, not to be an x. But with 'real' (as we briefly noted earlier) it is the negative use that wears the trousers.

  J. L. Austin

  Real, Knowing, Negative

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• 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, Austin, Heirs

  "Performativity". Book by James Loxley, p. 81, 2006.

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• Why should it not be the whole function of a word to denote many things?

  J. L. Austin

  Should, Function, Whole

  "Philosophical Papers". Book by J. L. Austin, edited by James Opie Urmson, Geoffrey James Warnock, p. 38, 1979.

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• Certainly ordinary language has no claim to be the last word, if there is such a thing. It embodies, indeed, something better thanthe metaphysics of the Stone Age, namely, as was said, the inherited experience and acumen of many generations of men.

  J. L. Austin

  Philosophical, Men, Age

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• 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 is a stand-in used in the place of any (or almost any?) verb with a personal subject, in the same sort of way that 'thing' is a stand-in for anynoun substantive, and 'quality' a stand-in for the adjective.

  J. L. Austin

  Philosophy, Expression, Quality

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• You are more than entitled not to know what the word 'performative' means. It is a new word and an ugly word, and perhaps it doesnot mean anything very much. But at any rate there is one thing in its favor, it is not a profound word.

  J. L. Austin

  Mean, Profound, Ugly

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• Ordinary language embodies the metaphysics of the Stone Age.

  J. L. Austin

  Age, Ordinary, Stones

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• 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

  "Philosophical Papers" by J. L. Austin, James Opie Urmson, Geoffrey James Warnock, 3rd ed., New York: Oxford, (p. 130), 1979.

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• 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, Austin, Done

  "A Plea for Excuses". Proceedings of the Aristotelian Society, 1956.

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• 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, Dimensions

  "Philosophical Papers". Book by J. L. Austin, edited by James Opie Urmson, Geoffrey James Warnock, p. 180, 1979.

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• 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

  "Philosophical Papers" by J. L. Austin, James Opie Urmson, Geoffrey James Warnock, 3rd ed., New York: Oxford, (p. 49), 1979.

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• There is no one kind of thing that we 'perceive' but many different kinds, the number being reducible if at all by scientific investigation and not by philosophy: pens are in many ways though not in all ways unlike rainbows, which are in many ways though not in all ways unlike after-images, which in turn are in many ways but not in all ways unlike pictures on the cinema-screen--and so on.

  J. L. Austin

  Philosophy, Numbers, Rainbow

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• I feel ruefully sure, also, that one must be at least one sort of fool to rush in over ground so well trodden by the angels.

  J. L. Austin

  Angel, Fool, Wells

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• 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

  "A Plea for Excuses". Proceedings of the Aristotelian Society, www.ditext.com. 1956.

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• The theory of truth is a series of truisms.

  J. L. Austin

  Truth, Theory, Truism

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