Saul Kripke Quotes

Logic chases truth up the tree of grammar.

The fish trap exists because of the fish. Once you've gotten the fish you can forget the trap. The rabbit snare exists because of the rabbit. Once you've gotten the rabbit, you can forget the snare. Words exist because of meaning. Once you've gotten the meaning, you can forget the words. Where can I find a man who has forgotten words so I can talk with him?

An utterance can have Intentionality, just as a belief has Intentionality, but whereas the Intentionality of the belief is intrinsic the Intentionality of the utterance is derived.

As a scholar I am interested in the philosophy of language, semiotics, call it what you want, and one of the main features of the human language is the possibility of lying.

Meaning is what essence becomes when it is divorced from the object of reference and wedded to the word.

What we really wanted to call it was 'I Rhoda Book.'

Parts exist only for purposes of figuring and describing, and as we figure the world out we become confused if we do not remember this all the time.

He's just simply John5 because he's the fifth person that we've hired. In the future, everyone will have numbers instead of names

Wittgenstein's ruler: Unless you have confidence in the ruler's reliability, if you use a ruler to measure a table you may also be using the table to measure the ruler.

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.

Words, in their primary or immediate signification, stand for nothing but the ideas in the mind of him who uses them.

Nothing is necessitated whose opposite is possible.

Capital' is not what capital is called, it is what its name is called.

…the book creates meaning, the meaning creates life.

Let's call something a rigid designator if in every possible world it designates the same object, a non-rigid or accidental designator if that is not the case. Of course we don't require that the objects exist in all possible worlds.... When we think of a property as essential to an object we usually mean that it is true of that object in any case where it would have existed. A rigid designator of a necessary existent can be called strongly rigid.

To me there is a name for each person. I think it’s marvelous to have a name. A woman is not a woman. It’s either Gena or my mother or some other person.

In this world one must have a name; it prevents confusion, even when it does not establish identity. Some, though, are known by numbers, which also seem inadequate distinctions.

I don't talk things, sir. I talk the meaning of things.

The first one, we’ll name Blue.

What should we gain by a definition, as it can only lead us to other undefined terms?

For a large class of cases - though not for all - in which we employ the word meaning it can be explained thus: the meaning of a word is its use in the language.

It seemed to a number of philosophers of language, myself included, that we should attempt to achieve a unification of Chomsky's syntax, with the results of the researches that were going on in semantics and pragmatics. I believe that this effort has proven to be a failure. Though Chomsky did indeed revolutionize the subject of linguistics, it is not at all clear, at the end the century, what the solid results of this revolution are. As far as I can tell there is not a single rule of syntax that all, or even most, competent linguists are prepared to agree is a rule.

Must a name mean something?" Alice asked doubtfully. Of course it must," Humpty Dumpty said with a short laugh; "my name means the shape I am - and a good handsome shape it is, too. With a name like yours, you might be any shape, almost.

It is thus quite simply false that whereof one cannot speak (in the sense of 'there is nothing to say about it that specifies it and grants it separating properties'), thereof one must be silent. It must on the contrary be named.

Philosophy may in no way interfere with the actual use of language; it can in the end only describe it.