J. L. Austin Quotes

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

- J. L. Austin

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

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

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

- J. L. Austin

There are more ways of outraging speech than contradiction merely.

- J. L. Austin

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

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