J. L. Austin Quotes

Is it true or false that Belfast is north of London? That the galaxy is the shape of a fried egg? That Beethoven was a drunkard? That Wellington won the battle of Waterloo? There are various degrees and dimensions of success in making statements: the statements fit the facts always more or less loosely, in different ways on different occasions for different intents and purposes.

Truth is about propositions. When it comes to determining truth, it is vital to understand the methods used by individuals in asserting propositions.

...logical validity is not a guarantee of truth.

Does truth have a moral?

In a mathematical proposition, for example, the objectivity is given, but therefore its truth is also an indifferent truth.

Truth and falsity is something that concerns language, it's a property of language.

A true proposition is a proposition belief which would never lead to such disappointment so long as the proposition is not understood otherwise than it was intended.

A tautology's truth is certain, a proposition's possible, a contradiction's impossible.

If it were true what in the end would be gained? Nothing but another truth. Is this such a mighty advantage? We have enough old truths still to digest, and even these we would be quite unable to endure if we did not sometimes flavor them with lies.

Sincerity is not a test of truth. We must not make this mistake: He must be right; he's so sincere. Because, it is possible to be sincerely wrong. We can only judge truth by truth and sincerity by sincerity.

A strange thing, words. Once they're said, it's hard to imagine they're untrue.

The dignity of truth is lost with much protesting.

A sentence has meaning in the sense that a train has a track, not that a train has a passenger.

Grammar is what gives sense to language .... sentences make words yield up their meaning. Sentences actively create sense in language. And the business of the study of sentences is grammar.

If only she could put them together, she felt, write them out in some sentence, then she would have got at the truth of things.

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

Truth has no gradations; nothing which admits of increase can be so much what it is, as truth is truth. There may be a strange thing, and a thing more strange. But if a proposition be true, there can be none more true.

Truth is sensitive and jealous of the least encroachment upon its sacredness.

Letters couldn't care less whether what is written with them is true or false.

Truth then seems to me, in the proper import of the word, to signify nothing but the joining or separating of Signs, as the Things signified by them do agree or disagree one with another. The joining or separating of signs here meant, is what by another name we call proposition. So that truth properly belongs only to propositions: whereof there are two sorts, viz. mental and verbal; as there are two sorts of signs commonly made use of, viz. ideas and words.

Involved sentences, crooked, circuitous, and parenthetical, no matter how musically they may be balanced, are prejudicial to a facile understanding of the truth.

I hardly ever talk- words seem such a waste, and they are none of them true. No one has yet invented a language from my point of view.

Marriage is what marriage is... It’s like going out and saying, ‘That tree is a car.’ Well, the tree’s not a car. A tree’s a tree. Marriage is marriage.

I wished to tell the truth, for truth always conveys its own moral to those who are able to receive it.

You don’t believe things because they make your life better, you believe them because they’re true.