J. L. Austin quotes

J. L. Austin was a British philosopher, renowned for his work in the philosophy of language and speech act theory. His groundbreaking lectures and writings laid the foundation for modern linguistics and analytic philosophy. He inspired generations of philosophers to examine ordinary language more closely. Here are 34 of his quotes:

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

Sentences are not as such either true or false.

J. L. Austin

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

J. L. Austin

Ordinary language blinkers the already feeble imagination.

J. L. Austin

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

The Nicomachean Ethics is only intended as a guide for politicians, and they are only concerned to know what is good, not what goodness means...and in any case one can know what things are good without knowing the analysis of 'good.

J. L. Austin

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

J. L. Austin

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

J. L. Austin

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

In the one defence, 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

Ordinary language is not the last word: in principle it can everywhere be supplemented and improved upon and superseded. Only remember, it is the first word.

J. L. Austin

It may justly be urged that, properly speaking, what alone has meaning is a sentence.

J. L. Austin

If 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?

J. L. Austin