Quotes from J. L. Austin

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

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.

Sentences are not as such either true or false.

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.

Infelicity is an ill to which all acts are heir which have the general character of ritual or ceremonial, all conventional acts.

The theory of truth is a series of truisms.

There are more ways of outraging speech than contradiction merely.

Ordinary language embodies the metaphysics of the Stone Age.

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

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.

I am not sure importance is important: truth is.

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.